I Said Don't Ever Change
by paperology
Summary: A continuation of the season 6 finale; Castiel declares himself God and Dean has to save him from himself, no matter the cost. Dean/Cas
1. Chapter 1

_This chapter is basically a summary/my own take of 6x22 The Man Who Knew Too Much. Next chapters will be what I would like to see happen after where Season 6 left off (but probably not what will, unless the writers decide to make Destiel canon). So obviously, Supernatural & its characters don't belong to me. =P_

Dean had been expecting all hell to break loose when Crowley finished the incantation, and was already bracing himself on the floor for the earth to open up and swallow him whole. But all that followed was silence, broken only by Crowley questioning his own pronunciation. He heard the familiar flutter of wings right before the accompanying gravelly voice addressed the perplexed demon.

"You said it perfectly…but what you needed was this," Castiel explained, setting the empty jar on the cart next to him.

Dean struggled to his feet through the pain, and caught Cas's eye. Though his expression didn't change, the steeled look in Cas's eyes said everything, and it told Dean that this fight was already over and Castiel had emerged victorious.

The angel broke their gaze and turned towards the thwarted duo. Dean could only watch on helplessly as Crowley finally brought Raphael to the conclusion that his little brother had him beat, and then inquiring how the ritual had gone for Castiel.

Cas dipped his head before a blinding burst of light ripped out of him, the wave of energy hitting Dean like a freight train colliding with his every cell, before the light was reabsorbed into the angel as fast as it had appeared.

Dean blinked rapidly, willing his vision to reappear, and he heard Cas before he saw him again. "You can't imagine what it's like…they're all inside me…millions upon millions of souls."

As Crowley made another snarky comment before disappearing, Dean thought of the times he'd seen the power contained within a single soul. The idea of millions of them inhabiting a single entity was staggering, not to mention terrifying. And yet here it was right in front of Dean, and he could see how it was affecting Castiel. The angel looked like he had the intention to wipe out an anthill with the firepower of a dozen nuclear warheads.

Sure enough, Dean watched with horror as the archangel that had caused this whole damn mess explode like a meat balloon with a snap of Castiel's fingers. Gone was the 'ass-butt'-calling Cas that shrunk in fear of his older brothers, here in its stead was this cold, methodical sonofabitch exacting his revenge.

Dean was panicking – this was a different person entirely; he was Cas corrupted by power, absolutely, if the number of souls was any indication.

Castiel turned his gaze on Dean, unforgiving and resentful. But when he started walking away, his swagger conveyed triumph and self-righteousness.

"So you see, I saved you."

"You sure did, Cas…thank you," Dean intoned warily, eyes never leaving the back of Castiel's head.

"You doubted me…fought against me. But I was right all along."

"Okay, Cas. You were right. We're sorry." Dean knew he was treading on thin ice, and in this case, thin ice that had a million souls knocking up from underneath it. "Let's just diffuse you, okay?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you're full of nuke." Dean prayed to someone, anyone that reason would work on Castiel. "It's not safe, so before the eclipse ends, let's get them souls back to where they belong."

"Oh no, they belong with me," Cas said to Dean as if speaking to a small child.

"No Cas, it's – it's scrambling your brain-"

"Oh I'm not finished yet. Raphael had many followers and I must…punish them all severely."

Dean caught a look from Bobby out of the corner of his eye, and he knew he was fast running out of options.

"Listen to me, I know there's a lot of bad water under the bridge, but we were family once…I'd have died for you." Dean cringed as he thought back. "I almost did a few times."

"So if that means anything to you…please. I've lost Lisa, I've lost Ben, and now I've lost Sam. Don't make me lose you too," Dean pleaded, his voice gruffer as the emotion and desperation made it difficult to talk.

The indifferent expression that had been on Castiel's face this entire time faltered for a brief moment at Dean's last words, and he looked down and away.

The opening didn't escape Dean's notice, and he threw himself into it: "You don't need this kind of juice anymore, Cas! Get rid of it before it kills us all!"

But Dean saw bleakly that his attempts were in vain, as Cas's eyes met his again with the same cold expression back in place.

"You're just saying that because I won…because you're afraid. You're not my family, Dean."

Dean's heart twisted in his chest.

"I have no family."

He felt Castiel's words pierce his heart at the same time he saw Sammy's hand thrust the angel blade into Cas's back. Dean couldn't move fast enough to stop him, and his brain tried to register the fact that his un-comatose brother had just killed the angel, their friend.

But Castiel had barely flinched, much less exploded in a fiery burst of screaming angel. The blade was extracted bloodless from his back with a metallic sound and laid gently on the table.

"I'm glad you made it, Sam. But the angel blade won't work…because I'm not an angel anymore."

All three humans exchanged panicked looks. If he wasn't an angel anymore, then the only thing Dean could think of was the complete, damnable opposite-

"I'm your new God. A better one."

Dean could do nothing but gawk. This was once the angel that pulled him from Hell on God's orders, and was resurrected not once, but twice by the big Guy upstairs. Sure, Cas had had a few doubts every so often about God's intentions, but even Dean was expecting this level of pride to get smote any second now.

"So you will bow down and profess your love, unto Me, your Lord. Or I shall destroy you."

As he watched Castiel staring out into space, Dean remembered the time he had told Cas never to change. He thought back (or forward) to when Zachariah had sent him to the future, to a Castiel who could barely remember his own name through the haze of sex, drugs and killing croats. That Cas had been a shell of his former divine self, and Dean barely recognized what had become of his friend.

And as this new Castiel stood before him, a newborn deity thrumming with power, Dean knew that this was just as wrong in a different way. Only this time, there was no going back, no fixing the past.

**TBC**


	2. Chapter 2

_Here goes part 2 of this story, a.k.a where my mind goes in between seasons. Godstiel scared the hell out of me & then made me sad in the season finale, so…yeah. Here's how I think it goes._

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The imminent threat hung in the air, thick and crackling with energy.

_Or I shall destroy you. _

The other hunter and his brother both glanced at Dean for direction, as if he still had sway over the actions of the bygone angel, and he wanted to shout at them that he never did – that Cas never actually lived in his ass, that it never was one simple call, and then 'Hello, Dean.'

At least not with this Cas. And there was no way in hell, earth, or heaven itself that Dean was going to get on his knees for _this_ epic case of megalomania.

"Cas…"

Castiel turned to Dean with such an empty, self-satisfied look that it struck Dean as completely alien on the face of his friend. It reminded him of all the times he'd seen people that he'd loved possessed by demons, their bodies being polluted by the evil contained within, and it filled Dean with such sudden rage that he couldn't control what he said next.

"No, Cas! This isn't you, and I don't even know who the fuck you are anymore, but you sure as hell aren't my _God_. So go ahead and do your worst! Smite me, blow me up, I don't care, so long as I don't have to see you become _this_ anymore." Dean ignored the frantic looks Bobby and Sam were giving him, as their fearless leader was apparently signing their death wishes along with his own.

"Dean…always wanting to take the easy way out, to just make it stop hurting. But that's not what you need, and I'm not going to just give that to you."

"Why not? What's stopping you, huh? I- We mean nothing to you anymore – you've made that perfectly clear by now – and you know me, Cas. You _know_ me. I will not rest until I bring you down, be you the _leviathan_ of all the big fishes I've taken on."

He swore he heard Castiel cluck his tongue over the pounding of blood in his own ears. "Such ungrateful words, Dean."

Cas began moving languidly across the room. "I've saved you time and time again, and still you doubt me. You're right – you well deserve to feel my wrath for your faithlessness…but I am a benevolent God, and you shall know my mercy."

He spun around and silence hung in the air, as if he expected that statement alone to bring the men to their knees. Just before Dean would've labeled it awkward, Cas sighed and continued.

"I will give you time to repent while I attend to other…matters, but be warned, my patience has its limits. You will submit yourselves to me in time, one way or another."

With that, the three hunters were left in the room by themselves.

"Dammit!" Dean kicked over a metal cart and sent it crashing to the ground. The loud noise rang through the room and Sam suddenly let out a cry and fell to the floor, clutching his head.

Bobby and Dean both rushed over to his crumpled body. "Sammy! What's wrong? Come on, man, talk to me!" Sam heaved and groaned a moment more, before collapsing into panting gasps.

"It's…I'm…I'm fine. I'm good," Sam finally choked out, swallowing forcefully and trying to regulate his breathing.

Dean knew he was lying, and moreover, he recognized the look on Sam's face as the one he'd seen in the mirror every day since he himself was pulled out of hell. By Castiel.

Dean shook that last thought away and helped Bobby drag Sam to his feet. "Come on, we've gotta get out of this godforsaken place." The various instruments of torture in Crowley's lab were clearly not helping his little brother's condition.

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Sam could walk unaided by the time they exited the building, and Dean's instinct had been to head straight for the Impala in the blur of all that had happened up to that moment. He saw the headlights still shining first, and the mess of black metal and glass that met his eyes next rent Dean's heart open anew. He'd sent Bobby and Sam home then, despite their protests to stick together.

As he stood before his beaten and broken baby, Dean finally allowed himself to feel the weight of all that had happened. The resulting wave of despair and exhaustion brought him to his knees, and ripped a ragged sob out of him.

It wasn't that the Impala was totaled. The car had been driven into the front of a house once, and then T-boned by a demon in a semi. And Dean had always put her back together, painstakingly, but always good as new once he was finished. Once he set his baby upright again, fixed up and painted the hood and installed new windows, she'd be all right.

He even thought that Sammy would make it through. He'd been through hell and back himself, and if Sam was at all related to him, there's no reason a couple months of screaming in his sleep would break the man irreparably. Yeah, it pained Dean to have seen the look in Sammy's eyes back in Crowley's lair, the one that spoke only anguish and no other coherent thought. But at least, Dean thought, at least he didn't have the guilt to live with. At least Sam didn't spend ten years torturing other souls and delighting in it.

Dean cried and Dean beat his fists on the pavement until they bruised and bled mostly because of the other thing. The thing that had dragged him from hell and gave him back his family and his life. The thing that had fallen from heaven for his sake and then tagged along with them for almost two years until he became a part of their messed-up family. That was what was killing him now. Life had left Dean more than a little wary of everyone and everything, and Dean didn't just let anyone in. So if there was anything Dean couldn't accept, it was the betrayal of his trust. It's the only reason they functioned together – you rely on each other in this family and you're goddamn upfront about it when you need help, because secrets and lies will always get somebody killed.

And now Castiel had _disowned_ him. The bastard had looked him unflinchingly in the eye and spat in the face of everything they'd been through together, of how hard Dean had tried to defend Cas when the others already knew, of Dean's confession that Cas was as important to him as anyone. It hurt like hell, and Dean would know.

So he raged at nothing until the first rays of dawn appeared over the horizon, when he called a tow truck to bring the Impala back to Bobby's garage and finally dragged his own bone-tired body back home.

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Bobby was dozing in his study when Dean rolled in, and he prodded the older hunter.

"Hnnh, wut?" he said drowsily, but Dean saw that his hand had gone straight to the gun under his desk before the rest of his body had even stirred; a good hunter's instincts never erred.

"Bobby, how's Sammy doin'?"

"Nnf, boy's been keepin' me up with his screamin' since I made him go to sleep after we got back. I eventually gave him half a bottle of whiskey in a plastic Solo cup so he can't hurt himself, and he's been quieter since."

Bobby had the right idea; booze always did make the nightmares a little less lucid. Dean decided to be sure though, and went downstairs to peer at Sammy through the door. His brother was tossing and moaning in his sleep, though it wasn't as fitful as Dean thought it could've been. Satisfied, Dean returned upstairs and sank into the living room couch.

He managed to pull a pillow into his chest before exhaustion took over and Dean sank into a deep sleep.

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"Hello, Dean."

Dean found himself standing in a baseball field in the middle of nowhere – not a person in sight. He glanced around him looking for the disembodied voice, and saw that he was standing next to home base, a T-ball tee set up with a little bat laying in the dirt.

_Okay, childhood memories. I am not awake._ "…Hello? Anybody out there?"

"How are you doing, Dean?" The voice had no attributable qualities to it, neither high nor low, male nor female. It was as like reading text on a page, only Dean could hear it, and from every direction.

"I'm doing great, but if this is my subconscious trying to psychoanalyze itself, I'd rather just skip the pleasantries and move on to part where the two busty twins usually show up-"

"This isn't your subconscious, Dean. This is God speaking."

Fear welled up in his heart. "…Cas, this isn't cool; you are _not_ allowed to try and strong-arm me within my own head-"

"I am not Castiel, Dean…I am the One who came before him, that created him and all his brethren, that created you and Sam and all that exists in the heavens and the earth."

Rational thinking escaped Dean for a minute, as his mind struggled to comprehend that he was talking to the Almighty Himself. He considered for a moment that he ought to be furious, but he settled for pissed-off insolence instead.

"So what've you come to tell me, huh? You want me to profess my undying love and devotion to you too? Well sorry, Pops, but I don't think Cas will let you have me every other weekend."

"I have not come to demand your worship, nor would I force you to do what you don't readily choose to. You have served My will well out of your own volition, Dean, and for that I thank you."

Dean was still a bit wary of this whole divine dream-speak, but he couldn't help but notice that this God seemed a whole lot more lenient than the one that had just recently leveled-up to god status.

The voice interrupted his thoughts. "However, I have a request to ask of you now. And it involves Castiel."

**TBC**


	3. Chapter 3

_Hello! I wanted to thank you guys for all the reviews & follows – they make me _very_ happy. (insert cheeseburger Cas face) This chapter sort of turned into a lot of lengthy exposition, and my thought process went all over the place, but I hope it's to your liking! (also, sorry if you've been getting multiple story alerts – I'm new to FFN & these fickle section breaks are killing me)_

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"_However, I have a request to ask of you now. And it involves Castiel."_

Dean didn't like what he was hearing. He refused to be anybody's pawn in this colossal clusterfuck of a celestial war, and he was still royally pissed at the God who had apparently tossed all his playthings in a box, given it a good shake, and walked away to let them sort themselves out.

Dean huffed and shook his head, raising a hand to halt the invisible voice. "Before you say anything, may I just ask where in _creation_ you have been up until now? Wait, don't tell me – my tortilla theory was correct, wasn't it? You've been running around this whole time slipping gratuitous pictures of yourself onto pop tarts and pancakes, while the rest of us have been trying to keep your henchmen from destroying _fucking humanity_."

"Dean, I know you'll find it hard to believe, but I have been with you and everyone else this entire time."

"…You're damn right I don't believe it – you mean to tell me you've just been on the side lines _watching_ this whole shit storm go down?"

"Providence is a complicated thing, Dean." And then He _sighed_. The God of the heavens and the earth let out a sigh of exasperation, and Dean could feel the air around him stir, tipping the baseball off the tee. He watched it bounce on the dirt, and the sudden weight of such immense weariness actually made him feel _bad _for the big guy.

"I created the angels in heaven long ago to love and serve Me, and from the moment of their inception, that is all they have ever known. They were my creation and I loved them dearly, but the love that they returned was what _I_ had put there. It was never cultivated, never given of their own volition. So I tried again. I made Man, and from the moment he drew his first breath, I knew that I had gotten it right this time. I had given you the ability to _choose_, to first come to _know_ My love before ultimately deciding to follow Goodness or Evil. And while it pains me that Man is capable of destroying one another, the devotion that Man can bring in the face of such suffering makes his love so much more meaningful."

"If I ever made a mistake, it was ordering my eldest children to love these newborns more than they were already hard-wired to love Me. Most of them obeyed Me out of duty, but one of My beloved Archangels resisted. As one of the four who had been with Me the longest, Lucifer could not understand what I cherished so deeply in a weak, mortal creature capable of rebelling against My will. I thought that if he lived and walked amongst Mankind, he would eventually come to feel for them as I did, so I commanded Michael to cast him down to earth. But Lucifer took the endeavor as a denunciation of My love for him, and refused to see. And so, like many after him that have acted in the name of their love for Me without fully understanding My will, he did the unthinkable and corrupted a human soul to be purely evil. I could not turn back what he had done, for I had sworn not to interfere with the souls that I had already created. However, Lucifer had to be stopped. He had too much power with which to keep hurting My children, so I confined him to the Cage with six hundred seals, in hopes that he might yet change. But the cost of punishing one of My beloved was so great, I couldn't bear to see it happen again. What had already passed was because of the all-surpassing love that My angels had for Me, so I decided to remove Myself from the picture in hopes that the angels would naturally steer their attentions and affections towards the souls on earth. I left Michael in charge, and with Lucifer made an example of for the other angels, I left heaven and went into hiding on earth amongst My most dearly loved."

Dean had been listening to every word, and it struck him that God seemed like any loving father that just happened to have parenting issues of cosmic proportions. It was practically cliché: mom and dad shed all their love and attention on their kid, then one day baby comes home from the hospital and new big brother gets neglected, can only see the wrinkly, crying thing as a threat – yeah, Dean's been there. He never tried twisting Sammy's soul into pure evil, but he did try getting his little brother into trouble a lot.

Dean suddenly realized that he was sympathizing with the devil. And as insightful as this all was, the question he'd been afraid to ask still hadn't been answered yet.

"So where do I fit into this whole never-ending story…and what exactly is it that you want me to do?"

"I need you to save Castiel from himself, Dean. Before he becomes another Lucifer and there's no going back."

Dean lowered his head and grimaced. He'd already tried. He'd already laid his heart out on the line and Castiel had pretty much snapped his fingers and blown it to bits, as far as he was concerned. "I'm really not the man for the job, I've gotta tell you. Cas has made it pretty clear that nothing I say matters. In fact, I don't think it has in quite some time."

"Dean, since I left the angels to start thinking for themselves, they have been destroying one another instead of heeding my call to love and serve the humans. Castiel…Castiel has been the only exception. When he pulled you from hell, he looked into your soul past all the darkness and saw the righteousness that dwells within. He saw that you were worthy of saving. And when he lost his faith in Me, he turned it towards you…Angel and Man united, as it should be."

The memory of Cas calling it a 'profound bond' cut across his mind, and he tried to shove it aside before it could cut any deeper. "I wasn't enough for him though. I'm not _you_, I'm not God, and whatever 'faith' he had in me ran up when he realized I couldn't help him."

"No, Dean. It was when I interfered and resurrected Castiel, that he mistook my approval for him as carte blanche to begin making rash decisions. One imprudent choice led to another, and somewhere along the way, his own pride exceeded his faith in you. Now that's he's taken in all of the souls, the power they hold is poisoning him. Which is why I need you to persuade him to relinquish the souls before they corrupt him indefinitely."

Dean cringed at the thought of the Castiel he knew being replaced forever by that heartless _thing_ that now inhabited him, but he didn't know what the hell he could do to stop it from happening. "Why can't _you_ be the one to do this, huh? _God_, he told me that I never…I never meant anything to him, and there's about a couple million souls that he values more than mine now, so I just wanna know _why_? Why did you make _him_ raise me out of hell? Why did you make him _fall_ for me? Why did you make him drag his sorry ass around with me for all this time if I was never worth it to him?" Dean was shouting by now, tears streaming down his face as he stared up at the heavens.

"I never made him do anything, Dean. Don't you understand yet? I haven't given orders in a very long time. Castiel was ordered by the host to raise you out of perdition, but everything that followed were his choices as a result of knowing you, Dean. You are his Righteous Man. His faith in you may have dwindled, but it's always been there. Even now, the power that he wields is only obstructing it."

Dean breathed deeply, eyes screwed up trying to control his unabating tears. He was hearing everything that had been too afraid to hope for, too immersed in his own self-hatred to believe. But he couldn't bear hearing it now, when it was all coming too late.

"…Why should I even care?" he asked quietly.

"Castiel may have fallen for you, Dean…but you've fallen for him too, have you not?"

He sank to his knees, a noise between a laugh and a sob escaping his lips. Of course he had. But like much of their communication, it had gone unspoken. Sure, they used words, but non-verbal seemed to be how the most got said. The angel knew him soul-deep and every look he'd seen in those deep blue eyes not only seemed to know his thoughts, but also answered back with exactly what he needed to hear. Dean loved him, because he was the only one who truly understood his shit and accepted him anyways.

Maybe he was just realizing this now, or maybe he knew it all along, but either way – it had always been him. Dean raised his hand and brushed his fingers along the scar on his left shoulder. He wondered if Cas could feel their connection even now from wherever he was behind the barricade of souls.

"Will you agree to try, Dean?"

"Yeah…yeah, I at least owe him that much," he replied, before chuckling darkly. "Hell, I'll grip him tight and raise him out of there if that's what it takes. He'd do it for me...again."

Silence hung in the air and Dean thought he felt another breeze pass by, this time tinged with the sense of relief.

"One more thing, Dean." The sudden gravity in the voice made him look up to see an angel blade with Enochian engravings suspended in the air before him. "If your efforts fail and Castiel cannot be redeemed, this blade is the only thing that can kill him."

Dean stared in horror at the weapon as he backed away. "What…no, I can't…you can't possibly ask me to do that-"

"It's precisely because it's the last thing you want to do that I'm leaving the responsibility to you. I know that you would never hurt Castiel as long as there's any glimmer of hope left. So take the blade, Dean. It won't be with you when you wake, but it will appear to you the moment you feel you need it."

"And what happens when I wake up? I have no idea how to deal with RoboCas, much less get through to the real…_my_ Castiel when he's trying to make me his newest convert to Castianity."

"I can't tell you what to do, Dean. You're the one he believes in – help him remember what it is that gave everything up for, and maybe he'll be able to do it again."

Dean sighed and began reaching for the offending object in front of him. He paused; "You'll be with me, whatever happens?"

"Always."

He pursed his lips and let his fingers make contact with the metal, before everything went white.

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Dean opened his eyes and sat up on the couch, squinting in the sunlight that was streaming through the window.

"Rise and shine, princess," Bobby grunted, as he strolled into the room holding a cup of coffee.

Dean grumbled in response, taking the cup and looking down at his reflection in the murky darkness. "Bobby, you got any of that whiskey left?"

**TBC**


	4. Chapter 4

_This chapter was kinda hard to write (dunno why) – so sorry that it's taken me all week. If you're still reading, thanks for sticking with me!_

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><p>"…<em>God<em> spoke to you. In a dream. Like, Jacob's ladder-style? And did you _see_ Him?"

Dean regarded the enraptured look on his brother's face and scrubbed a hand over his mouth. He'd called Sam and Bobby into the study after trying to gather his thoughts over the cup of coffee this morning and failing to do anything other than give himself a headache. The whole prophetic vision/second-hand declaration of love/divine charge to fix-or-kill said lover was threatening to split his melon right open. Dean was glad that God had spared him the theatrics, because he was pretty sure he would have shat himself if he'd seen Zachariah and Michael putzing around on some holy StairMasters.

"I was in the field where Mom used to take me for T-ball practice as a kid. There was nobody else there, and then this voice just started speaking like it was coming from inside my own head. It was God, Sam. Because I don't think anything else in existence sounds like…like a stream trickling and a Himalayan avalanche all at the same time."

Sam and Bobby were seated in the leather chairs listening to Dean, who leaned up against the desk. Sammy had wandered upstairs sometime in the morning and seemed to be in better condition than the night before, though he was wincing every few minutes, but whether from a massive hangover or the effort to keep the unwelcome thoughts at bay, Dean wasn't sure. Even so, Sam listened as intently as Bobby to story-time as Dean recounted what God had told him about Lucifer's hissy fit, the good intentions that had led to His own absenteeism, and finally the main reason God had made the house call.

"…Apparently up until he went berserk, Castiel was movin' on up in Daddy's eyes. Report cards on the fridge and everything. It seems working with us made him the poster child of angel-human reconciliation, or something." Dean knew that it had more to do with his own personal bond with Castiel, but he wasn't about to let on to the other men what God had said to him. Plus, he needed their help and he wasn't sure they'd want to be involved in his personal quest to rescue his fair maiden. "He wants us…well, he wants _me_ to get Cas to purge himself of the power of the souls before they turn him into Gollum."

Bobby spoke first. "_How_, exactly? Last I remember, the bastard was trying to make us grovel at his feet and sing hymns about him. If we can trap his ego in a pentagram, then great, but otherwise what the hell are we supposed to do?"

"I don't know. God wouldn't tell me anything…He just said that I needed to save him from himself. I accepted because if Cas is still in there, and if…if God still has faith in him, well then so do I. Yeah, so I have no idea how, or where to start, but I have to try to find him, goddammit. Because if I can't…God's ordered me to kill him. I need you guys with me to make sure it doesn't come to that."

"Dean."

He looked up into Sam's gaze, the pain in his face now mixed with doubt.

"Just…why are we doing this? I know Cas was our friend, but even before he ingested all those souls, he wasn't the same person anymore. He _lied_ to us, Dean, he betrayed us and then he-" Sam winced again, "He did _this_ to me. The Castiel that was our friend never would have hurt us. Even if we brought him back, who's to say we'd even know him anymore? So you accepted the task, Dean, and I'd follow you anywhere, you know that, but this is a suicide mission. I can't justify putting my life on the line for the bastard that's putting me back through hell every time I close my eyes. If you can stop him, why don't you just do it already?"

Dean clenched his jaw. "This isn't the first time I've gotten a paternal order to save-or-terminate someone important to me, Sammy. I didn't give up on you, so don't ask me to give up on Castiel."

"Dean, _he_ gave up on us! Cas turned to Crowley and then _that_ wasn't good enough for him and he had to open purgatory to power himself up-"

"Are you really going to pretend like Ruby and the demon blood never happened?"

"That's differ-…I wasn't-…Dean, I'm your _brother_! I'm sorry Castiel turned his back on us, on you, but you know as well as I do that the people in our lives always walk away, and it's always just you and me and Bobby in the end!"

"Not this time, Sam. I'm not just letting him leave."

"Why _not_? Why the hell is Castiel so damn important to you-"

"Because I'm in _love_ with the bastard, all right?"

"_What?_"

Dean wished he'd said something along the lines of _God's putting the squeeze on me_ instead of blurting out the truth, considering the looks on Sam and Bobby's faces. Silence hung in the air until Dean realized their jaws were going to stay on the ground unless he started talking.

"Look, I'm having my own little gay-_City of Angels_ crisis at the moment, okay? It took a lot of convincing from _God Himself_ for me to 'fess up about my feelings for the guy, and I'm still not sure what it all means other than that it somehow makes me the one to save Cas. And I'm pretty sure a kiss on the lips isn't going to wake him out of his egomaniacal slumber."

"…This isn't some side effect of the 'profound bond', is it?" Bobby ventured.

"What? No – Sam, you _told_ him about that?" Sammy shrugged and Dean heaved a sigh. He was pretty sure he was making the whole situation sound like a cosmic joke, but his feelings for Cas were more than just an epic case of ESP. He just wasn't used to spilling his guts to the two men that regularly called him 'Jerk' and 'Idjit'. Lay down his life for them – anytime; explain his gay love for a cranky angel to them – he'd rather take the first option.

"People have always walked in and out of our lives, yeah. And we've all learned by now that it's better if we just keep our distance, because it hurts less that way when they leave, or when we get them killed. I thought…I thought with Lisa, if I loved her enough and if I could make her accept what it is that we do, I could make things work. She already knew it was hopeless, but I was an idiot and kept trying, and I almost got her and Ben killed." Dean already missed them like hell, but knowing that they'd be safe from him now brought a sense of relief he hadn't felt the whole time he'd still been trying to mend things with Lisa.

"I realize that I can never be with someone that I'd be putting in constant danger by just _being_ there. I'd always be too busy trying to save their life or worrying that their life needs saving to actually let myself love someone. I'm a danger to people, and as long as that's true, I can't afford to let someone love me either. The thing is…I need someone that doesn't need saving, and moreover, someone that can save _me_ for a change. Cas dragged me out of hell, guys. All the women I've ever been with have turned tail and split as soon as they found out what it is that I do, but Cas actually saw what I'd become in _hell_, and he still stuck around afterwards. He knows me better than anyone, even better than you, Sammy. He knows my every cell in its place, my every screw-up and hang-up, and he still thought I deserved to be saved. I think I realized this a little too late, but he's the only one I don't have to pretend to be stronger than I am around. If I could just see him again so I could tell him…" He felt the all-too-familiar burn of tears beginning again.

"You guys are family, and you know what you mean to me. But Cas…I need Cas. Something good finally wandered into the shitstorm that is my life, and I'm not letting it walk away this time. If Cas were here, I think he'd tell me that I deserve it."

"Well Dean…you deserve to be happy." Sam's expression had softened; Dean saw when he finally looked back up. "I gotta say, I didn't see this coming; I always thought I'd lose you to some badass chick with double-D's, not the holy tax accountant."

"Speak for yourself, those staring contests in my house always seemed a tad too sexually-tense to me," interjected Bobby, eliciting a cringe from Sam and a glower from Dean.

"Yeah, well, I don't want any mental images, but if you're really in, uh, in _love_ with Cas, then you've got my blessing or whatever. And our help. Right, Bobby?" It was almost comforting seeing Sam as flustered over this as he was, considering how Dean had never once confessed his love for someone else to his brother before. If he was gonna be awkward, fine; at least now he knew how much this meant to Dean.

"I'm gonna go hit the books before you two start trading kissing tips, or whatever you girls talk about," Bobby mumbled before stalking out.

The two brothers were left in the room, staring at every inanimate object within their range of vision. Just before the proverbial elephant threatened to squash them both, Sam spoke.

"Hey…I'm sorry for what I said earlier about Cas. If he's still got God's seal of approval, then that's good enough for me."

"No, I get it, Sammy." Dean looked his brother dead in the eyes. "I don't want you to think that what you're going through is fine by me. Because I've been there and I know what it's like to hate the bastards that threw me in hell, that made me relive it in my dreams every night for months. I'm sorry too, Sam. You're going through a lot already and I've got no right to ask you to do more for me. But I promise you I will fix this."

"You just work on saving Cas first, Dean. If we can manage that, then we'll ask him to put the wall back afterwards." Dean returned the tired smile that Sam offered him, and placed his hand on his brother's shoulder.

"Pray for me, Sammy. I'm gonna need it."

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><p><em>Okay, I promise Cas will come back in the next chapter (or at least Godstiel =P)! This one was pretty SamDean-centric, but I wanted to deal with what Sam's going through too. Poor guy. Anyways, see y'all again soon! _


	5. Chapter 5

_Hello! Thanks for all the reviews - you guys make me smile (& write more). Here's chapter 5!_

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><p>It was late afternoon and the boys were still slumped over the countless tomes of Bobby's library. Dean's eyes kept crossing and uncrossing as he stared at the pages in front of him, and their supply of coffee was running precariously low. But there was no way they were going to take a break, not while they had no idea when Castiel was going to drop in for his next social visit and demand more than tea and biscuits from them. They felt like they were trapped in an hourglass, only the sand was invisible and who knew how fast their time was pooling around their feet.<p>

"Couldn't the old geezers have bothered to put indexes at the end of these friggin' textbooks?" Dean slammed another volume shut and tossed it towards the giant pile on the floor between them. Unlike bookish Sam, Dean could only take so many hours of flipping through pages before his hands just itched to shoot something. He stood up and began pacing amongst all the discarded texts and empty ding-dong wrappers, remnants of an unproductive afternoon.

"I'm not coming up with anything here…seems like exorcising multiple souls from angelic beings isn't a commonly analyzed subject," said Sam, as he stuck out his tongue to catch the remaining drops of coffee from the mug he held over his face.

Dean growled. "I'm _this _close to climbing back into that sewer and wringing answers out of those damn dragons. If they knew how to get Eve out, maybe they know how to put stuff back in…"

"Don't be an idjit, Dean. You don't have the sword that you broke anymore, and I read their entire instruction manual and it only describes the process going one-way." Bobby looked up at the boys. "There's next to nothing in these books; Ellie sure did a thorough job of keeping purgatory on the down-low…too bad the only person who might've been able to help us ain't exactly available for consultation no more."

A dim light bulb went off in Dean's head. "Maybe she kept something with her at her cabin. We should head over there and see if we find anything."

"She already told us that she was the only one that knew anything about how to open purgatory…I doubt she would've kept any hard evidence."

"Yeah, but that was just the key to _opening_ purgatory. Who knows if she's got other dirt lying around about what happens if it gets opened. Either way, I can't just sit around here and read about Anglo-Catholic after-death purification anymore…we've gotta _do_ something."

Dean grabbed the keys and headed for the door as Sam and Bobby exchanged a quick glance. It was clear that Dean was going with or without them so they hurried out the door and piled into the Impala after him, and the three hunters sped off to Eleanor's safe-house.

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><p>Dean popped the lock of the sigiled-door effortlessly and walked into the tastefully furnished front room. It struck him as ironic that the 900 year-old creature had good decorating skills but not the sense of better security. Eleanor <em>had<em> cleaned up though, that much was obvious. The place was immaculate. Unfazed, Dean walked towards the nearest set of drawers and began pulling them out and dumping their contents on the coffee table.

"Search these," he ordered Sam, before proceeding to knock on all the walls, waiting to hear a telling difference between each consecutive rap of his knuckles. The other two men obediently rummaged through the pile, thumbing through stacks of paper, CD's, and books.

"There's nothing here besides stuff from her medieval studies class, Dean. She didn't leave anything incriminating behind-" Sam was interrupted by a loud thud and the sound of wood splintering.

"Ha! There she is," grinned Dean, pulling out the panel of wood to reveal a small, steel safe behind it. "You guys keep looking – I'm gonna go get the stethoscope from the car."

Dean hustled out the door towards the Impala, popped open the trunk and leaned in when suddenly he felt a hand on his shoulder and his blood chilled.

"Hello, Dean," was all he heard, before he looked back up towards the cabin's open door and saw the horrified faces of Sam and Bobby frantically trying to reach him. Then his vision blurred and he felt the familiar visceral back flip before all went dark.

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><p>He was standing in the beautiful room. The baroque ornamentation hadn't changed, and that damn harp was still there, but the paintings now seemed to depict angels being drawn and quartered, among other horrific things. As his disorientation passed, Dean realized that the hand was still on his shoulder and he jerked around to face Castiel.<p>

"Cas." Dean wasn't sure whether to drop to his knees, kiss those familiar lips, or punch the angel-god in his rock-solid face. He'd been so caught up in trying to find a way to undo this that he hadn't thought about what he'd even do when Cas confronted him again. But the son of a bitch had just snuck up on him and pulled him alone out of his own territory. Dean decided he'd rather punch him in the face.

Castiel regarded him with a head-tilt that almost read like a challenge, a perversion of the quirk that Dean had never allowed himself to consider 'endearing'. "What were you doing at Eleanor Visyak's cabin, Dean?"

"Would you believe that we were cashing in on our part of the timeshare?"

Castiel's empty blue eyes narrowed. "I believe that you aren't stupid enough to try and stop me."

"And what is it that I'd be trying to stop you from doing, Cas? What exactly _have_ you been up to with your new superpowers?"

A smile formed on Castiel's face, evoking the image of a pleased, sadistic cat. "The angels that chose to follow Raphael are being punished as we speak. They must atone for their lack of judgment. I summoned all the other angels and gave them the same choice as I gave you, Dean. Submit themselves to me or suffer the fate of Raphael."

"You're giving your own brothers the surrender-or-die speech? _Jesus_, Cas!"

"I told you Dean, I have no family. Those that profess their allegiance to me will serve in the purge of dissidents, and all others will perish by their hands."

"…You're no better than, Alistair, you know that? What, you pick up a few ideas from him when you pulled me out of hell? Those souls are poisoning you, Cas – what kind of product did you think you were getting when you picked _purgatory_ for your next score?"

"Dean, do not speak of what you do not understand. The angels have wreaked enough havoc in the absence of a leader; I am merely ensuring their obedience for the safety of mankind. You don't have to worry anymore. I am in control now."

Dean only gaped at him, but Castiel continued. "I have done all this for you, Dean, like I've said all along. I have given you the chance to repent, when my own brethren have had no such luxury. Will you not yet express your love and gratitude unto me?"

It was like a reverse-_Intervention_ moment, and Dean hoped for a brief moment that if he said yes, if he confessed that he couldn't bear to see the man he loved become a victim of his own addiction, maybe Cas would see what he was doing to himself, to Dean. But something told him that it would only empower Castiel in his false sense of righteousness, and Dean couldn't in good conscience allow himself to be a part of Cas's self-destruction.

"No Cas, it's not right, any of this. What happened to freedom and free will? The whole reason you gave up heaven and then went back again…"

"Freedom amongst angels is a temptation that they ultimately cannot resist. They are too powerful to have their own ideas and risk acting on them. Even humans wield too much power in their hands. You constantly wound and kill one another over your own skewed beliefs, when in fact your depth of knowledge is so limited that you cannot see truth before your very eyes. I am going to create a world of peace and order, Dean. All beings in creation shall obey me and live in harmony, and I shall provide for them as a god should. It will be what you have fought your entire life for – an existence without evil, without suffering. You and Sam and Bobby will finally be able to live without fear of losing one another, and I will watch over you for all of eternity. I want you to share this new world with me, Dean – you will see paradise with your own eyes and know my glory. All I ask of you is your faith and devotion."

He was like a child that had drawn out his dystopian plans in Crayola watercolors, rainbows and butterflies painted over the images of oppression and coercion. But he wanted Dean to see it like he did, to be proud of the picture that Cas held before him, as if the fate of the world didn't depend on it and Castiel wasn't promising the destruction of free will within each brush stroke.

"It's not that simple, Cas…this plan, what you're proposing, it's going to wipe out the very meaning of humanity. Your _father_ created us to make choices and believe out of our own volition, not become animatronic flesh suits!"

"My father's intentions were good but misguided. I've already seen how they would turn out; even if the angels did not start the apocalypse, in time humankind would self-destruct. Can you not see that this is all for your own good, Dean?"

"No offense Cas, but I think I'm still going with the red pill."

In reality, Dean's resolve was flagging and he half-expected each subsequent rejection to see him strapped to the table in the center of the room and cattle-prodded. Still, he had more than thirty years' worth of resisting persuasion and he sure as hell wasn't backing down now, regardless of who it was that was doing the persuading. But he knew it was a matter of time before wrathful, vengeful Castiel would rear its ugly head.

So when his eyes met the crestfallen look on Castiel's face, it floored him momentarily. Blue eyes pleaded with him to acknowledge their worth, a subtle confused hurt filling the emptiness that had otherwise been stagnant. "Why won't you trust me still, Dean? Would you really choose pain and suffering over loving me? Do you find me so abhorrent?"

"Cas, no, I _do_ lo-…Er-"

"You do what?" Castiel's eyebrows lifted precariously, the verbal slip leaving Dean no other way out.

"I…I love you." He thought the confession would have felt more meaningful, but it was like saying it to a photograph of the one he meant it for. He swallowed the disappointment and continued. "I just can't agree with what you're doing here, with what this power is turning you into. I don't even know why my feelings still matter to you."

Castiel cast him a pitying smile and laid a hand back on his shoulder. "I am pleased to know of your devotion, Dean. There is hope for you yet. I know that it is difficult to accept something which you do not yet understand, so I vow to prove to you the virtue of my intentions. You will see soon, Dean: I am a God worthy of your reverence."

And with that, the room disappeared along with Castiel, leaving Dean standing in the same spot he was whisked away from. He shifted, and the twig that snapped underfoot prompted the other two hunters leaning against the Impala to spin around.

"_Dean!_ What the hell happened? Did he hurt you?" Sammy rushed forth and gripped his brother by the shoulders, while the older man visually checked him for injuries.

"I'm fine – he just wanted to…chat." _And I might've told him I loved him but he didn't say it back. But otherwise I'm fine._

"And he just sent you back? You didn't pledge our eternal allegiance to him, did you?"

"No, and I think the targets are actually off our backs now…but I think I might've made things worse in general."

Sam and Bobby blinked at him, and he grimaced. "Get in the car, I'll explain on the way back."

**TBC**


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6 is finally here - I should be sleeping instead of writing...but this is more important. =P

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><p>The three of them drove straight back to Bobby's, and Dean recounted the tête-à-tête in the green room, from Castiel's ongoing persecution of his own brethren up to the vague promise Cas had made him before vanishing into very thick, very tense air. They sat in silence at the end of the update, knowing there was nothing to be done but wait for Cas to call on Dean again. Frankly though, he was getting sick of being the spokesperson. To make matters worse, Bobby had cracked the safe in his absence and found nothing, suggesting that either Eleanor had emptied it or Cas had already been there, if there had even been anything of import to begin with. And Sam was no better off – his brother's sudden disappearance and reappearance had taken a toll on his already fragile condition, and Dean had held vigil over Sam's sleeping form until the convulsions finally settled to intermittent shudders.<p>

Back on the living room couch, Dean stared out the uselessly-sigiled windows and let the sense of dread wash over him. He half-entertained the idea that Cas would come back and throw a giant Bacchanalian party in his honor, chock full of booze and hot women, just to prove his 'divine benevolence'. But most likely not - this Cas didn't really seem like that kind of event planner, and Dean had no fucking clue what the alternative was and it scared him shitless to stand around waiting. Again. At least last time, it was only their own lives at stake – he wasn't sure if the universe was going to explode at any given moment as a gift-wrapped present to yours truly. And the worst thing was that it would be all his fault. He'd finally spoken to Cas again, and instead of rescuing his angel from the evil within, he'd made things ambiguously worse.

Dean buried his face in his hands. He didn't know why he deserved God's vote of confidence in the first place, but it had been clearly misplaced. He'd had no idea how to talk down a nuclear reactor, his only tactic being to stick to his guns and that had damn-near provoked the god into decimating the earth. Dean had screwed up…and he knew what he would have to do if Cas showed up at any moment and declared existence itself a threat to his 'plan'. But the thought of his own hands driving a blade into Cas's heart, to have the last look in those unfathomable eyes be one of pain and betrayal…it would hurt less to plunge the blade into his own gut.

He was useless. Either way, he couldn't make good on his promise to God. And although he knew it was irrational, the feeling wouldn't subside that whatever crazy shit Cas pulled would be on his own head. Dean wasn't even aware that he was crying until he had to grab a pillow to muffle the sobs, lest the others hear him. It was still his burden to bear, and he was set on keeping it that way.

The pillow was making his gasping breaths a bit futile, the lack of oxygen slowing his mind and his body. Dean found himself welcoming the lightheadedness that was lulling him into oblivion, finally granting him respite from his own over-worked mind. The pillow dropped from Dean's hands onto the floor as he drifted off into unconsciousness.

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><p>At first it was just darkness. Silent, empty, dreamless darkness. Like floating in a pool at night, where the silence rushed deafeningly around him and the darkness seemed to stretch to infinity. Where his own consciousness was absent and couldn't taunt itself with the dangerous truths of what was happening in the waking world.<p>

And then someone reached in and wrenched him out of the trance, sending him spluttering to the surface until he realized there was never any water to begin with. Just a set of brown eyes on a narrow face, framed by straight brown hair and set on what appeared to be five foot-four inches of disapproving teenage girl.

"Dean, did you just attempt to asphyxiate yourself?"

He blinked a few times. Nope, definitely had never seen her before. And they were standing in an empty school cafeteria. Where did his head come up with this stuff? "Uhh, no…Ambien just wasn't working for me. Who the hell are you?"

"Muriel. Angel of the Lord. The real one, not the one that's currently hunting and killing the lot of us."

A switch flipped in Dean's head. "What is it with celestial beings and not being able to hold conversations on the _normal plane of existence_? You know what? It doesn't matter – none of you have anything to say to me, so you can see yourself out. And I swear, if I ever see another pair of wings again, I'll make sure to duct tape the pillow to my face next time."

"Dean, please listen-"

"No, shut up and leave. Now."

They stood in silence, the girl watching him with dismayed but resigned eyes before she turned and began to walk away. As she reached the double doors under the giant 'Go Comets!' banner, she spun around again to face Dean, exuding an almost _ancient_ anguish that contrasted against her youthful features.

"He's killing all my brothers and sisters. His own brothers and sisters. I watched him rip the wings off of Adriel and drag the grace out of his chest shrieking." Her voice came out broken and choked by tears. "Adriel is the youngest one of us."

If Dean wasn't aware that angels generally had no feelings, the trembling girl before him might have pulled a few heartstrings. As it were, his guard didn't let up a fraction as he stared back unflinchingly.

"Why should I give a damn? You angels started the civil war that drove him to swallow all those souls; you deal with it yourselves."

"He's too powerful for any of us to take on by ourselves, or even together. I couldn't even find you on earth in case he was watching. But Castiel is our brother, and we know he would not harm us if it weren't for the evilness of the souls. We want to save him, Dean, but we need your help."

_You and everyone else. _"There's nothing I can do, believe me. Don't try to convince me; it'd just be a waste of your time."

"Dean, we've known your importance to him since he was first sent to find you on earth. You're our only hope of getting through to him before he destroys all of us. I never wanted to fight in the war, but we lesser angels had no choice and so many of us have already perished. There are only a handful of us left that Castiel hasn't tracked down and we're running out of time. If you won't help us…we'll be dead within the week."

"So they sent a girl scout to try and recruit me? Sorry kid, I ain't buyin'."

The angel looked up suddenly and fixed him with an intense stare.

"If I help your brother, will you help mine?"

Dean instinctively opened his mouth to refuse, but he stopped when he realized what the angel was implying. "…What are you talking about?"

"I know what Castiel did to Sam. I can fix him if you wish. I can put the wall back."

"So this is a deal then? I do what you want in exchange for fixing Sammy?"

"Dean, I don't want to coerce you into anything, but I would do anything to save my brother. Surely you understand that?"

Dean thought of Sam lying in the panic room, reliving atrocities in his nightmares only to wake up the next morning with no relief but to carry on with their relentless mission. It was so much to ask of him. If these angels cared half as much about Cas as he did about Sam…maybe they could help him do what he couldn't do alone.

"I can't stop Cas single-handedly, all right? So what is it you want me to do?"

"When we figure out how to remove the souls from Castiel, we will need to get him to lower his guard so we can get close enough to help him without being destroyed. You're the only one he still shows some semblance of concern for - that's why you're the only one who can help."

"I'm _bait_? A _diversion_?"

"Your role is the crux of this operation, Dean. We all want Castiel back. If you accept, we will call upon you when the time comes so that you can summon Castiel. All we ask is that you hold his attention, and we will take care of the rest."

"You already know _how_ to deactivate him?"

"That knowledge…is still out of our grasp at present. But it can be done, and we will stop at nothing to find it, I assure you."

Dean stared into her childlike brown eyes and saw the old soul within. Muriel was a walking incongruity, but other than that, the gaze that she returned seemed guileless and sure. Besides, she wouldn't be the first angel he'd encountered that was more than met the eye. If he played his own cards right and let the angels handle the hard part, they might be able to all get out of this unscathed. No more people had to die.

"So, is now a good time for you to come fix Sam?"

Muriel smiled and her gaze turned inward, though the chocolate irises were still pointed at him. It was getting borderline eerie for Dean, until the intense look abruptly snapped back into place.

"Castiel is currently out of heaven and somewhere on earth, so I will wake you and if the coast is clear, call for me."

Dean opened his eyes in the dark of the living room, and half-groped his way to the basement to where Sammy was lying. The only sounds were his brother's soft grunts, and he suddenly remembered that the whole house was angel-proofed. Cursing the inconvenience of that one act of self-preservation, he shook Sam awake. The boy nearly took Dean's head off in his alarm. "_Jesus,_ Sam! Come on, we've gotta get outside so that sort of shit stops happening." A bewildered Sam followed his brother upstairs and out the front door, where Dean deduced that they were alone. He cleared his throat. "Muriel?"

A softer-sounding flap than he was used to heralded the girl-angel's arrival. Wordlessly, she reached two fingers up to Sam's crinkled forehead and closed her own eyes. Sam gave a grunt upon contact and his knees gave out, giving Dean barely enough time to grab his brother and lower him to the ground.

"He'll be fine again when he wakes," Muriel said, answering the frantic look Dean was giving her. Dean looked for himself, and the peacefulness on Sam's features was indeed a sight he hadn't seen in days. When he raised his eyes, the angel was gone.

Dean sighed, both from relief and from exhaustion, before hooking his arms under Sam's and dragging his giant brother's dead weight back into the house. He eventually managed to wrangle Sam's body onto the couch, and lowered his own to the floor. The pillow was still sticking out from under the couch. Dean grabbed it and stuffed it under his head before he promptly passed out.

**TBC**


	7. Chapter 7

_This one's a bit longer. Chapter 7, in which Dean wants beer and Cas makes good on his promise. But not quite like that. R&R! =)  
><em>

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><p>Some hours later, in the early morning when the light was beginning to stream in through the windows, Dean woke up to Sam's immense weight landing on top of him.<p>

"_Gah– Sammy!_" Dean wheezed, shoving his flailing brother onto the hardwood floor next to him.

"Oh sorry…uh, it was really hot and I was trying to get away. I must have rolled off the couch." Sam pushed himself groggily off the floor.

For a split second Dean thought that Muriel had lied to him about fixing the wall and that Sam was still dreaming of hellfire in Lucifer's cage. Then he looked at the couch and realized that the sun was shining directly on it. Sam must've been roasting for a good half hour by now.

Not entirely convinced, he looked back at Sam for any of the telltale tremors and winces that he'd been unable to control over the past few days. All he got in response was a loud yawn and a smacking of lips.

"Dean, why do I feel like I haven't slept this well in days?"

Dean's eyes widened. "Sam, what's the last thing you remember?"

"Uh…you woke me up and dragged me outside, and then some…girl touched my head. Who the heck was she?"

"Doesn't matter - do you remember the…cage? And Cas and the souls and the crazy?"

"Yeah Dean, Cas ate the souls and is trying for world domination and wants you to give him the go, I know. But- what? The cage? Lucifer's cage?" It suddenly hit Dean that he should stop probing, _now_. If the wall was back up, he had no idea how strong it was, and it hadn't been entirely resilient the first time around. Nevertheless, Sam seemed to register the panic on Dean's face as confirmation. "I remember I fell in, and then I was back and a complete dick for more than a year and a half until…until Death put my soul back. But I've been myself since then. Right?"

"Yep, yourself. My pansy brother with his soul back. I want a beer - you want a beer? I'm gonna go get us some beers." Dean scrambled to his feet and pushed past a wary Sam to get to the kitchen.

"Dean, it's eight in the morning! Beer is not breakfast!"

"What are you two idjits yelling about this early?" Bobby hobbled downstairs, before Dean grabbed him by the arm and dragged him into the kitchen out of Sam's earshot.

"Listen, I might have made a deal with another angel to put the wall back up in Sam's head, and before you start yelling at me about trusting angels, I didn't sell my soul or anything, they just have me on call to run interference. Sam seems to remember being Robocop and everything since _except_ his time in the cage, so whatever you do, _don't_ bring that up, got it?"

Bobby gaped at him and looked back at Sam, who had sat back on the couch and was picking at the loose threads. "Who the _hell_ is this other angel and what do you mean 'run interference'? Run interference for _what_?"

"Okay, I got dreamscaped by Muriel the holy girl scout last night, alright? Peanut Butter Patty's one of a handful of angels that are looking for a way to make Cas cough up the souls. They asked me to…keep him occupied when the time comes."

"And you can trust her?"

"Well, she fixed Sam, so that's a point in her favor. And honestly, I don't know if I'm any more cut out for the job than they are." Dean took Bobby's pause to duck his head into the fridge. "No more beer, Sammy! I'm heading out to the store – you want anything?"

"Not beer! Eight, Dean, eight!" Sam's reproach was met with a slam of the front door.

* * *

><p>Dean walked through the sliding doors of the Hy-Vee and made a beeline for the beer aisle. He grabbed two twelve-packs of Coors Light and started for the registers, but the shiny cellophane wrappers in the snack aisle caught his eye and he took a detour. Dean was tempted to just grab every type of chip, so he set the beers down and stood there contemplating how many bags of air he could fit under his arms.<p>

"Hey babe, I'm making a grocery run before my afternoon shift – you want me to get you some Funions?" a woman's voice came from behind. Dean had glanced back at 'hey babe' and seen that the dark-haired woman in hospital scrubs was talking into her phone and not him. Subtly, he turned his attention back to the selection of snack foods. Until his entire body tensed when he realized that he recognized the woman. He'd met her before. Not only that, but he'd inadvertently gotten her killed when he decided a little girl didn't deserve to die even though it was part of the 'natural order'. And the man she was currently on the phone with had nearly killed himself out of grief. Dean spun around. "_Jolene_?"

Jolene's conversation with her husband trailed off as she took in the flabbergasted man before her. "I'm sorry, do I know you?"

"You're…you're _alive_." Dean couldn't help but choke out a laugh – he'd seen her body bloodied and broken on the gurney, the look of sorrow her spirit had given him as Tessa led her away, Scott getting behind the wheel to follow his wife out of this life. His experience as Death had done a serious number on his psyche, no doubt about it.

"Um- sir, I think you have me mistaken for someone else…" Jolene was eyeing him nervously, and Dean could hear Scott's tinny voice asking if everything was all right.

Dean coughed and straightened up. "Yeah, sorry, I thought you were someone I knew…my bad." He grabbed a bag of Doritos without looking and scooped up the beers before practically sprinting to the checkout.

If Death and Tessa had pulled a fast one on him and staged the nurse's death just to screw with him…Dean was gonna be thoroughly pissed for the crap he'd put himself through out of guilt. But if it wasn't them, something bad was seriously afoot. The last time people they knew started coming back to life, Sam, Bobby and himself were almost killed by the vengeful ghosts of people they didn't save. But Jolene had seemed…corporeal, and blissfully ignorant of Dean's existence. That was the odd part. Not being alive, but being alive and well.

Dean sped home in the Impala and burst through the front door, goodies in hand. The other two men were sitting in Bobby's study, awkwardly doing nothing. Dean wondered for a minute if he was really the linchpin of this whole operation, and who the hell put his sorry ass in charge. But if he was already there…he tore open one of the cases and started prying off the caps, doling out rations to his men. Sam eyed the bottle skeptically, but accepted it.

"Bobby, I need you to look up Agent Victor Henriksen from the FBI."

"-What, you mean the Agent Henriksen that Lilith killed in Colorado?" Sam cut in. "What's he got to do with Cas?"

"With Cas? No, I saw this woman at-"

"Found him. Special agent Victor Henriksen is stationed at the FBI office in St. Louis, and according to the database I'm not supposed to have access to, he's closed a good number of cases this past year. Dead men don't generally do that."

Dean scrubbed a hand over his mouth. "Google Meg Masters." The two men gaped at him, but Bobby did as asked.

"Says here she graduated magna cum laude from George Washington University two years ago. She's currently a doctoral candidate at NYU studying cultural anthropology…and Meg never possessed her."

"Dean, what the hell is happening?"

"I…I honestly don't know." He looked up at the others. "They're all coming back. Or they've never been gone, and they have no idea who we are and what our existence apparently has never done to them. If we're gonna figure out what's causing this, we need to know out how far back this goes."

A few hours of phone calls and internet searches later, the boys discovered that Ronald Reznick had been promoted to manager at the bank, Ash was making an honest living at a software development firm (with some much more lucrative freelance hacking on the side), Gwen was still hunting with the rest of the Campbells who had never even heard of Crowley, Pamela had 20/20 vision and was still running her psychic practice, along with dozens of other happy-endings that should never had happened. And when Bobby called the Roadhouse and Ellen answered, their elation at hearing the Harvelles alive was cut short when it became clear that while Bobby was an old acquaintance, neither Ellen nor Jo had ever heard of Dean or Sam.

All the people that had died for their sake, safely back on earth with no recognition of the name 'Winchester'. But it's when Bobby told them that Karen and Rufus were still gone, and all the people soulless Sam got killed were still dead, that they realized Dean was the only one whose slate was being wiped clean.

And that Castiel unmistakably had something to do with it.

"I've heard of diamond earrings and skywriting, but this level of affection is a bit overwhelming." Bobby held up the list of all the people Dean had made him track down. They'd all been found, lives demon-free, but it left something to be said about how many names Dean had been storing in his heart all these years. How he had managed to stay standing under all that weight, much less keep the world from imploding was a mystery. Or a miracle.

"I have to go talk to him," Dean determined. "I…I would want nothing more than to see all these people alive and happy, but I've seen what happens when you screw with the natural order. Nothing good can come from all these people being resurrected. I've gotta undo this."

And before Sam or Bobby could stop him, Dean had sprinted out the door to the Impala and peeled out.

* * *

><p>"Cas! We've gotta talk! Can you take a break from smiting for a minute and come down?"<p>

He glanced at the empty passenger seat.

"Come on, you can hear me – these sigils don't work anymore. I know about your little present and I want to thank you in person-"

"Dean."

Dean cleared his throat and stared back out at the open road. Okay, so the second time seeing him again was no easier than the first. "Cas, I'm real flattered by the whole resurrection deal, I mean, it's nice that you care so much, but I don't think it's such a good idea…you know, big picture, circle of life – it's just not meant to be meddled with."

"I merely reset their lives to their original paths before they encountered you, Dean. I have ensured that their fate remains isolated and will never intersect again with yours. They will be safe and happy this way, like you want, correct?"

Dean's stomach dropped at the realization that all these people would have led fortunate, contented lives if they had never run into his sorry self. Cas apparently read it on his face. "You carry the guilt of a thousand men, Dean. I have brought back these lives to show you what a perfect world can look like, where you'll never have to fear for the lives of those you care about."

"But it's not right, Cas! They're supposed to be dead, and as much as I might have wanted to save them once, I've already made my peace with my failures!"

"Even with your parents?"

"With my-, what Cas?"

"Your parents. I was just restoring their lives when you called. Are you at peace with their deaths?"

Castiel had brought his parents back. For a moment, that's all Dean heard. They were probably happy and whole, and had lived the last thirty years without Azazel or any other imminent threats to their welfare. But if they came back the way they all did…"They don't remember me though, do they?"

"You were never their son – they never knew you. It's kept them out of harm's way these past thirty years. Your father owned his own auto repair shop until he retired recently, and your mother, she worked as a schoolteacher for twenty years."

Dean gripped the steering wheel, hard. He knew it was wrong, he knew he'd called Cas to undo all this, but he had to know. He turned his head to look at Castiel. "Can I…can I see them?"

Cas regarded him with a perplexed look. "I can take you to see them, but I cannot allow them to see you."

Dean slowed the car to a stop and nodded, and out of the corner of his eye he saw Cas's fingers extending towards him before his vision narrowed to a point and re-expanded.

They were standing in front of the two-story home, the white-wash that he remembered now painted a light blue. Sammy's nursery upstairs bore no evidence of ever having been consumed by fire. And surprisingly, the wicker chairs on the porch were still the same. He took a step closer, before looking back to check with Castiel.

"You're invisible to them, and they can't hear you either. I'll be waiting out here when you're done."

Dean cautiously walked up to the front door and saw light inside. With one last glance back at the trench coat on the lawn, he turned the knob and stepped in.

**TBC**


	8. Chapter 8

_Hello lovelies - sorry about slow updating...but here's chapter 8! R&R. =)_

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><p>Dean took a few cautious steps into his childhood home, his footfall weighing much heavier on the hardwood floor than he last remembered. The smell of meat and spices wafted down the hall, and Dean could hear light humming and the clinking of cookware. In the dim lighting that flowed from the kitchen, he could make out the picture frames that hung on the walls of the hallway, a pictorial timeline of a happy couple that had lived far from anything supernatural. A faded photograph of John and Mary smiled at him as they had when they'd visited 1978, full of love and innocence. Dean's gaze followed the series of frames as they aged, photo after photo of the couple with the same contented smiles that had never been wiped away. And not a single one showed a sandy-haired boy and his baby brother. Dean knew that in this life, there had never been tomato-rice soup, "Hey Jude" when he couldn't sleep, crusts cut off from his PB&amp;J sandwiches. And there had never been a yellow-eyed demon, a need to sacrifice oneself to save family, a lifetime of hunting to fill a hole that could never be filled.<p>

The sound of a door unlocking came from the back of the house, and Dean heard a gruff, familiar voice follow the sound of steps and the door shutting.

"I smell chili! Did I do something good?"

Dean carefully inched towards the kitchen and leaned in to see his mother spin around from the stove with a smile. John swooped forward and wrapped her up in his arms, pressing a kiss to her forehead and leaning forward to draw in a deep whiff from the pot without letting Mary go.

"It's Thursday – I thought we should celebrate with chili," Mary chuckled over John's shoulder, her body bent backwards at the awkward angle she was being held in.

Dean hadn't seen his father in five years, his mother in twenty-eight, time travel notwithstanding. Yet the John in front of him looked younger than Dean last remembered him, having never bore the weight of his wife's death nor raised two sons on the road. The green eyes that he'd never passed on to Dean and Sam glinted with contentment and the slight paunch of his stomach spoke of a life free of quick reflexes and hand-to-hand combat. And _Mary_. Mary looked as lovely as he'd always remembered her – long blonde hair lighter now, blue eyes crinkled in amusement, and most importantly, _alive_.

He watched his parents sit down at the table, bowls of chili flanked by salad greens and dinner rolls. John dug in contentedly, while Mary stirred her food and watched her husband with a smile.

"How's Bill doing down at the shop?"

"Good, business has really taken off under his management. He's thinking about expanding over to Topeka if things keep looking up like they've been. Handing the reins over to him was probably the best thing I ever did for the shop."

"Do you miss it though?"

John looked into her blue eyes with a genuine smile. "I get to spend my time at home with my beautiful wife instead of with a gang of greasy, surly men. Believe it or not, your company is much more pleasant. Besides, I was spending most of my time in a stuffy office by the end instead of under the cars like I used to. But I'm an old man now, and Bill's business savvy is much better suited for the job."

Mary smirked. "You're hardly in a wheelchair yet, John, but I do enjoy having you at home now."

"How was the after-school program today?"

"Oh, you know. I've been working with Stevie Pike from Mrs. Aaronson's class on his reading this week, but he's not been making much progress. Mostly he just keeps trying to fling pencils at Laura Walker for the entire hour."

"I know I've said it before, but you're an honest-to-God saint, Mary. I thought after twenty years of full-time teaching you'd be fed up, but you still go back every day to those kids. Maybe it's just because I'm terrible with them. Like that one time I made that little girl cry when I brought you lunch…"

"Ah yes, Julie Nowicki. Every time thereafter whenever Sandra intercommed to tell me 'Mr. Winchester is on line one,' she would tear up a bit."

John burst out laughing, his mother's amusement more contained but Dean could see the tears also forming in the corners of her eyes. They looked every bit the picture of domestic bliss, and Dean had no doubt that in another twenty years, John and Mary Winchester would be the old couple holding hands in the park that all the young lovers tell themselves that they'll be someday. And Dean suddenly wanted nothing more than for them to get there, more than he wanted to have been a part of their lives. Though he couldn't have his parents back, they could at least have each other.

Dean looked at the scene one last time, trying to encode every last detail of the way John looked at Mary, of the way Mary reached out to entwine her fingers with John's. Then he turned back and walked down the hall and out to the yard, where Castiel was still waiting like he'd promised.

"Okay Cas, you win. Take me home," Dean mumbled, looking anywhere other than those blue eyes.

Cas watched him silently for a moment. "You don't want me to restore them to their deaths?"

The wording made Dean cringe, and he knew it was a loaded question but the son-of-a-bitch had already gotten to him. "No Cas, I want them to be just like this, I want them to be happy and live to be a hundred, and I want them to know nothing about me, alright? Isn't that what you want me to want?"

The god-angel only tilted his head at Dean's outburst. "You want your family to be safe and happy, you wish innocent people didn't have to die in the wake of your fight for mankind, and you would rather be removed from their lives if it means that they can live in peace. Do you see it now, Dean? It is better for us all this way."

For a moment, it made sense. They were all alive and at peace, and Dean hadn't been erased from existence, so maybe he really could just walk away from the all pain and guilt that was his life. But the tiny sliver of selfishness that Dean still possessed shouted at him in opposition. The bad memories may never have happened, but he still wanted the good ones to have been real. He wanted to know that people had really loved him, and that somewhere they still did. But he didn't know if that was worth giving up the happiness that Cas had given back to them.

"I don't get to be a part of this," Dean whispered, looking back at his childhood home. "I don't get to set the table for my mom, or help my dad out with his cars. I don't get to stop by the Roadhouse and be hugged by Ellen and Jo. I don't get to hear any of them say that they love me. What's the point in being here if I don't matter to anyone?"

Dean suddenly felt the familiar intrusion into his personal space and he whirled around to see Cas's bewildered eyes boring into him from inches away. "You matter to _me_, Dean. You always have and you always will."

The man felt his throat go dry at the confession that wasn't really a confession. He knew that somewhere inside, Castiel meant it, but the blue eyes that watched him remained stagnant, shallow pools.

"You don't need to be afraid of being alone, Dean. No matter what happens to the others in your life, I will always be there. And as I am God, you will never need to worry about my safety, and my love alone will be more than enough for you. There is nothing more for you to regret, Dean."

"But Cas…you're my greatest regret."

The deity took a step back and regarded the tearful human like Dean had wounded him.

"My parents, my friends, all those people aside, I'll always know that I couldn't save _you_, Cas. I'll always know that I was the one that drove you to this, by making you think that I was righteous and worthy, by making you give up heaven for me, by failing you in the end and forcing you to take these measures to save everything we'd fought for. I should have been there for you, Cas. I shouldn't have lost faith in us and left you on your own. I lost your trust because I couldn't trust myself when you needed me most."

Dean was the one to close the gap this time, and he placed hesitant hands on Cas's face, his voice coming out broken. "I'm sorry, Cas. I'm sorry I couldn't be the man you needed me to be. I'm sorry I let this happen to you. I'm _so, so _sorry, Cas."

He dropped to his knees, but Castiel's arms reached out and dragged him back to his feet, his grip unrelenting.

"Dean." He blinked away the tears to see Cas's bottomless eyes watching him sadly. He'd pierced through the ice, though it was only a fracture. Dean could still see through the rift into deep space, into the profound depths of Castiel's being. It had always scared him before, this two-way mirror that he knew revealed as much of himself to Cas as he could see of the angel. But now he dove headfirst into the rift, searching with all he had to find Cas and bring him back to the surface.

All Dean felt at first was limitless depth. Then Castiel's thoughts began reaching out to him. They came in hushed waves, but Dean could feel the familiar love and devotion he'd always denied was there. If Cas's arms weren't wrapped around him already, Dean was sure that in that moment Cas's gaze alone could have carried his entire weight. He focused his mind to respond in kind, when all of a sudden the warm feeling was replaced by a sense of Castiel's regret. And sorrow. _I didn't mean for this to happen. I just wanted you to live. I wanted to keep you safe, from Michael and Lucifer, from Raphael. I wanted to protect you so much that I couldn't stop what I'd already started. Even when you told me to. And now it's too late for me. I can't control them, Dean. I'm so sorry._

Dean felt himself being dragged bodily back to the surface, collapsing in a heap at Castiel's feet. When he looked up, the ice had frozen over again.

But now that he'd found him, he wasn't going to let Cas slip away that easily.

Scrambling to his feet, Dean gripped Castiel's shoulders and shouted with desperation into empty eyes. "Wait, Cas! You son of a bitch, you don't get to give up on me that easy! You never have, so don't you start now – I _need_ you, you stupid angel. I fucking love you, and I'm going to save you if it's the last thing I do, so _don't you give up, you hear me?_"

Whether or not he did, Dean's Cas was nowhere to be found in the steely gaze before him.

"I do not require saving, Dean."

The hunter dropped his hands and stepped backwards, jaw clenched. He lowered his head with one last futile look at Cas and muttered, "Take me home."

Dean felt rough fingers touch his temple, and then he was standing back outside Bobby's, alone.

**TBC**

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><p><em>AN - This was so angsty. Gah._

_Anyways, I'm moving back to the US next week so the next chapter is probably going to take a bit longer. =/ A big _sorry_ in advance!_

_In the meantime, please review - I love hearing what you guys think!_**  
><strong>


	9. Chapter 9

_Hey all! It's been awhile, my apologies – I've been busy with the move back stateside, but I'm all settled in now. A big, big thanks to everyone that's still been reading & reviewing! 3 3 anyways, here's the next installment. =) R&R!_

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><p>"Sam! Sammy!"<p>

The door swung shut after Dean as he walked into Bobby's, footsteps falling heavily on the hardwood. He needed to see his brother - not talk to him, but just to have his fixed presence near him. He'd just found and lost Cas again all in the span of five minutes, and he just needed to see Sam, to know that Sam wasn't going anywhere. So he charged through all the rooms of the house looking for his brother, but the giant man was nowhere to be found.

Bobby's voice preceded his descent down the stairs. "Dean! I didn't hear your car pull up. Sam went out after you - I thought you'd have come back with him."

"No, I-, Cas-" Dean scowled, pulled his phone out of his pocket and speed-dialed the first number. It rang the standard five times until, "Hey, you've reached Sam Winchester. Sorry I missed your call, plea-" He hung up and punched the call button again, but to the same frustrating result.

The panic started to set in. Sam always had his phone on him, and he always answered his phone as long as it was on him.

"Did he say where he was going?" Bobby shook his head. "I'm going back out after him then." Dean started back for the door.

"Dean! You oughtta just wait here, you idjit – there's no sense in the two of you running around each other-"

"I'm not waiting around, Bobby. Something doesn't feel right-," Dean called back as he swung open the door and stepped out, nearly running straight into Sam's enormous frame. He stumbled back, Sam's hands shooting out to grab his shoulders, looking anxiously into Dean's face.

"Dean! Where the hell have you been? I found the Impala on the side of the street and you weren't in it – I started freaking the hell out and drove all over town looking for you! And how'd you even get back here?"

Dean opened his mouth to respond, but the relief of seeing Sam safe and sound and in front of him suddenly allowed all the exhaustion he'd been fighting back to rush over him. He let his expression fall, and it was all Sammy needed to know that his brother needed him. They'd seen the same look on each other's faces countless times, all the times they'd thought they'd lost the other, but miracles or demon deals had brought them back together. Sam didn't make Dean move first; he stepped forward and wrapped his arms around his older brother, who finally let out a ragged sigh and raised his own arms to clutch back at Sam.

"You found Cas, then?" Sam murmured quietly.

Dean nodded into his shoulder. "…And then I lost him again."

Sam held his brother tight until Bobby coughed behind them, the older hunter's discomfort having exceeded his sensibility at last. Dean echoed the cough and pushed Sam away by the shoulders, enough of himself again that he avoided looking up into Sam's concerned puppy eyes, even as they still tried to seek out his own.

"Sam, Cas…Cas brought Mom and Dad back like he brought all the others back." Dean felt the stunned tension in his brother's shoulders without needing to look up. "They're in Lawrence, in our old house. They've got their own lives and everything."

"And they don't…"

"No, they don't remember us. We were never born to them. And it's all – it's all _hunky-dory_," Dean said with a scoff. "And I couldn't take it away from them."

Sam was quiet for a moment. "Dean, none of that's _real_. It's not _supposed_ to be real."

"You think I don't know that?" Dean's eyes snapped up. "Cas practically dangled them in front of me like a consolation prize. But you didn't see how happy they were, Sam, how _normal_ their lives were. You know, I have dreamed and wished my entire life to be able to go back thirty years ago and save Mom from burning on that ceiling. And now someone's done it for me and while it may not be the _ideal_ situation, I can't look this gift horse in the mouth. I just can't."

Sam watched him with his lips pressed together, but he pushed no further. Dean felt a little grateful towards him for that, but the look in Sammy's eyes suggested he still had some more things to say.

Dean wasn't going to give him the chance to. "Why the hell didn't you pick up your phone when I called you? Twice?"

The taller Winchester's eyes widened. "Wha-? You didn't call me-," Sam pulled out his cell and flipped the screen open. "Huh. It was on silent. I don't remember setting that."

Dean shook his head with a fond glower and walked into the kitchen, the chick flick moment having passed. "I'm starving; you two boys want some frozen pizza?"

He heard Sam let out a pained grunt, just before the sound of a large body hitting the foyer floor and Bobby yelling, "Dean!"

He was there in an instant, helping the older man turn his brother's body over and slapping Sam's cheek to try and rouse him. Sam stayed unresponsive even as Dean yelled his name inches away.

"_Dammit_, not again," Dean growled. He rose to his feet and stepped over Sam's prostrate body, careful not to hit him on the way out the door.

"Dean, where do you think you're going?" Bobby yelled after him.

"To file a complaint!"

The door slammed behind him as he rushed down the stairs to get farther away from the angel-warding sigils.

"_Muriel_!" Dean kept walking across the lawn. "Muriel, I don't care if your wings are on fire, you get your cookie-selling ass down here right now!"

He almost walked straight into the girl-angel when she materialized, standing nearly a foot shorter than him, not to mention she appeared to be hunched over in pain.

Dean stepped back. Muriel raised her head to look at him, revealing fresh bruises on her jaw and cheekbone, a trickle of blood running from a cut on her forehead under tangled hair. Her clothes, a green and white striped tank top and blue jeans as Dean remembered seeing her in his dream, were now torn and stained with drying blood.

"You…who did this to you?" Dean eyed her warily.

"Do you really need to ask?" she sighed. "We've been running from him. Not entirely effectively, as you can tell, but we're not all dead yet."

Dean remembered the night Cas had dragged him into that alley and unleashed blow after blow upon him in his rage, nearly beating Dean to death. It unnerved him to think how powerful Castiel was now, to be able to do that to a legion of angels. He shook the thought aside; it really didn't have anything to do with him, and there was a more important matter at hand.

"You know, your _wall_ didn't hold up for very long. Sam's already unconscious again back there, so you'd better tell me why the _fuck_ you screwed him on this, because you can mess with me, but you do _not_ mess with my brother."

Muriel looked at him with wide eyes, but there was no uncertainty there. "Castiel has diminished the host's power. Without it, the wall I put in your brother's head was not able to withhold his memories, and I am unable to restore it as I am."

"Then call your whole crew down here and lay your wings on him, or whatever you need to do!"

The angel closed her eyes and breathed out slowly through her nose. She looked on the verge of smiting him for his impetuousness, making Dean flinch until she suddenly coughed and clutched at her side. Dean realized Muriel probably couldn't strike him dead even if she wanted to.

"Dean, we're on the run for our lives right now. I'm sorry but even if we _tried_ to put the wall back in Sam's head, our powers would be so drained as to leave us defenseless against Castiel. It would be certain death."

"Have you…have you figured out how to save him yet?"

Muriel held his gaze for a moment, before looking down and away. "No…but we're still searching. We're not giving up yet."

She must have guessed the agitation on Dean's face, because she met his gaze up abruptly. "Dean, do you have any ideas?"

Dean was momentarily blind-sided. He suddenly remembered T-ball, and God sighing in the wind, and the blade with Enochian inscriptions. _The blade_. The thing guaranteed by God himself to be able to stop Castiel, when there was no hope left, when Cas was gone and never coming back. Even still, Dean would die before he'd ever accept that they were at that point.

"No."

She nodded. "I'll let you know if we find anything. Again, Dean, I'm sorry about Sam." She smiled ruefully, and disappeared with a flap of wings.

* * *

><p>Dean watched over his brother's form just like last time, eyes fixated on any signs of consciousness and nothing else in the room. The pizza that Bobby had finished baking for him lay untouched on the table.<p>

Sam stayed immobile on the tiny cot in the center of the panic room, his steady breathing the only thing indicating life. Above them, the fan rotated lazily in the dying sunlight, casting a faint shadow on Sam's body. Dean watched the dark petals spin around and around, hours passing, until his eyes finally drooped shut.

He dreamt of water, of swimming deeper and deeper until the light on the surface was a wavering speck. He saw shadows of figures lurking around him, millions upon millions of them crowding the depths, making it dark as night. But he was searching for one in specific, one that his soul _knew_. He swam for hours, weeks, years, until his bone-tired body found the one he was looking for. It glowed brighter than all the ones around it, and Dean reached out to take hold of it, to grip it tightly and raise it up with him. They ascended together, and Dean could begin to see the light again, when a gut-wrenching scream broke through the water and Dean's grip loosened. The figure slipped out of his grasp and plunged back into the depths, as Dean himself was wrenched back to the surface.

Sam was screaming bloody murder, and Dean shot up out of his seat to grip his shoulders and shake. "Sam! Sam, it's me, it's Dean! You're safe, Sammy, I got you. Come on, snap out of it!" Sam's arms flailed out, striking Dean and knocking him over the chair. The younger Winchester's eyes shot from side to side as if seeing invisible demons and not his own brother. He dipped his head and wrenched his eyes closed, fists coming up to alternately rip at his hair and beat at his skull, labored grunts issuing from between his clenched teeth. Dean remained on the floor, paralyzed with horror.

Bobby threw the panic door open, stopping at the sight of Sam's violent breakdown. "What in the…"

"Get-" Dean swallowed thickly. "We need a sedative, a fucking horse tranquilizer, something before he kills himself." Bobby ran out of the room and returned with a syringe full of clear liquid.

"I'll need you to hold him still while I inject it."

Dean rose to his feet and circled behind Sam. In one quick movement, he hooked his arms under his brother's biceps, pulling back and locking Sam's arms in place. He pushed his weight forward to keep Sam anchored to the bed when he was almost thrown off, and Bobby strode over and plunged the needle into the junction between Sam's neck and shoulder. Sam took none of it quietly, and it took both men to keep Sam stable until he finally relaxed, head lolling back with distressed but sluggish groans. They lowered him back to the bed, and Dean helped Bobby secure Sam to the frame with cord, just in case.

Sweating from exertion, Dean collapsed into the chair. "We can't keep him sedated indefinitely. Hell, Gigantor's probably gonna wake up in less than two hours, and then it'll be WWE Smackdown all over again. I don't think my body can handle repeats. I don't think Sam can either."

He watched his brother's half-lidded eyes twitching, the intermittent grunt emanating from his clenched jaw. "I have to call Cas. He said before that he'd fix this. No one else can."

"Dean…"

"Bobby, go upstairs. I don't want to get you involved where you don't need to be." The older man's brows furrowed at him reluctantly, but he turned and walked up out of the basement.

Dean leaned forward and laid a hand on Sam's damp forehead. "You're gonna be okay, Sammy. Hang in there."

He stood and stared at the blank wall in front of him. A twinge in his gut betrayed his fear that Castiel wouldn't help Sam. He knew Cas would never harm Dean himself, but he no longer knew how the deity felt about his former friend. But they had honestly run out of options.

"Cas? I need your help. Sam and I, we need your help."

The god appeared in an instant, a haughty but subdued smile on his face. _Dean Winchester needed _his_ help. _Castiel looked at Dean, then at Sam tied to the bed grunting incoherencies.

"I see."

Dean watched him carefully. "Can you…can you put the wall back? Please, Cas, I know Sam turned his back on you, but he's my brother and I can't let this destroy him, I just can't, so if you won't do it for him, will you _please _do it for me-"

Castiel stepped forward quickly and reached out two fingers. Dean expected darkness to wash over his consciousness when they touched his forehead, but Cas just smoothed his fingertips over the creases between Dean's eyebrows.

"You worry too much, Dean."

**TBC**


	10. Chapter 10

_A/N: Hey hey, I just wanted to point out/ask you to ignore the fact that Dean's been driving around in a magically repaired Impala. I kind of forgot that it'd been totaled, heh. That's all! Here's chapter 10. =)_

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><p>"<em>You worry too much, Dean<em>"

Castiel's fingers pressed into the ingrained creases of Dean's brow, smoothing over the lines etched by time and hard luck until the hunter's breath slowed and his eyes drifted closed. Dean could feel the heat of Cas's palm millimeters away, and he breathed in greasy diner, the stratosphere, and Jimmy's aftershave. Or maybe that's just what Dean wanted to smell, wanted to remember. In reality, Castiel smelt of the galvanized air before a dangerous thunderstorm, the electricity threatening to flow through his fingers and strike Dean dead.

Cas dropped his hand, taking the charged touch with it and leaving a deafening silence in its wake. He strolled to the side of the cot and brushed his fingertips along the side of the thrashing man's temple. Sam's movements stilled.

"The wall has been reconstructed. Sam will be alright when he wakes."

Dean let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. "Cas, thank you, I know you didn't have-"

"You wished this changed anything – I know." He took a step back and looked Dean square in the eyes. "And you're right – it doesn't. I've…I've tried to make you see that everything I've done has been for you, to bring you a world of peace and security. But it hasn't been enough. The people you couldn't save, the people that died for your sake, even your parents; they haven't been enough to make you see. You can't accept the plans I have for you because your mind has not yet felt the peace I wish to bring to the world."

"Cas…what are you trying to say?"

The god shifted his gaze back to the figure sprawled on the cot. "Since the day you carried him out of that burning house, you've borne the weight of keeping Sam safe. You've believed that your father measured his love for you by how well you cared for your little brother. You've never known a duty greater than keeping your brother alive. I should have seen this from the beginning – I should have known. As long as you feel Sam is under your protection, you'll never let yourself see. He is your albatross, Dean."

The hunter had gone ashen, striding over to place himself between his baby brother and the deity as soon as he saw Castiel's eyes move towards the cot. "The _fuck_ he is, my '_albatross'_. He is my _brother_ and you had better stay the hell away from him, Cas, or so help me God, I will-"

Dean had let the oath slip in his anger, but Castiel didn't fail to catch the irony of the evocation. "I _am_ helping you, Dean."

"He'll be safe, and no longer a hunter," Castiel's eyes shone with resolution as he continued, amidst Dean's trembling protestations of _shut up Cas, you son of a bitch, shut up_. "He will be happily married to Jessica, with a little boy and girl that love their father very much. Sam will visit your parents during holidays with his family, and will have worked as a civil rights attorney at the same firm since he graduated from Stanford."

"_No_," Dean choked out.

Cas laid a hand on Dean's shoulder to shift him aside, but the hunter struck it away and seized the lapels of Cas's trench coat, shoving him backwards. It took every ounce of his fighting strength, and even still Castiel only took a few measured steps back, moving only because he allowed himself to be.

"Don't do this, Cas. Don't make me fight you."

"You would not win."

Dean let out a bitter laugh, raising his clenched fists. "Have those words ever stopped me from trying?"

A knowing look crossed Castiel's face, before a single raised hand sent Dean's body flying into the wall, an invisible weight pinning his limbs to the cold steel. True to his word, he continued to fight and struggle against the iron grip, watching Cas step up to Sam without sparing Dean another glance.

From his position on the wall, Dean could only respond helplessly to the panic of watching Castiel caress Sam's face by snarling and roaring, trying to break through his bonds to stop the god from erasing his brother. But Cas seemed deaf and blind to the hunter – he brushed a lock of hair out of Sam's forehead with a quirk of his mouth. "He was my friend too. I wouldn't harm him, Dean. He will be happy."

"Cas, you know what he means to me. You can't do this to me, you can't. _Please_." Dean felt himself getting light-headed and dropped his head, desperation finally making him stoop to beg.

But the souls had evidently left no room for pity, and Castiel met his gaze emptily, sparking a final fragment of rage in Dean.

"I swear, Cas – I _swear_ – if you do this I will never forgive you."

"I think in time, you will."

The deity laid a palm flat on Sam's head, and both figures disappeared in a sudden, white flash. The invisible shackles holding Dean to the wall went with them, and his knees and hands connected painfully with the concrete floor.

Before he could even push himself back up, another wave of pain washed over him. It was incorporeal this time, coming from somewhere within him as if a part of himself had been ripped away, leaving a ragged edge. Reality seemed to have rippled and changed in that instant, and it didn't take Dean more than that instant to know that the eviscerated part of himself had been _Sammy,_ forcibly wrenched out of time and space and wiped clean.

Dean gaped at nothing on the ground, spluttering and speechless, before releasing a howl of agony loud enough to send Bobby hurtling in moments later and dragging him up off the floor.

"Come on, _up_, boy! What the hell happened? Where's Sam?"

Dean lifted his head, his features still wrenched in anguish and panting. "Gone. He…took him."

The older man's eyes softened when he saw Dean's distress, but Bobby was never one to get sidetracked from the task at hand, especially when it came to the boys. "Castiel took him? To where?"

Dean stared him blankly in the eyes, before pushing him aside with a whimper and stumbling up the stairs and outside.

"Muriel!" He collapsed onto his knees in the dirt as soon as he was clear of the porch steps. "I fucked up, _please_, just get down here-"

An instant later, Dean felt tiny hands on his arms, and then suddenly he was on his feet.

"What are you talking about, Dean? What did you do?" The angel stared up at him with a mixture of impatience and agitation, waiting for an answer.

Coherence continued to elude Dean. "I fucked up," he spluttered again. "I thought I could trust him…I thought he'd listen to me…and now I lost Sam."

Dean sunk back to his knees in front of the girl. "I can't do this anymore. I keep pretending that I'm going to fix things, but I can't and everything I've tried has made things worse. At this rate, we'll all be dead or brainless slaves by next week, and it'll be my fault. Because I can't stop trying…but he's _gone_."

"Is Sam-"

A sob broke out of Dean, interrupting her. "Not Sam - _Cas_. Cas is _gone_. I lost him a long time before he took Sam. If I had admitted it sooner, Sam might still be here."

Muriel watched him in silence for a moment, finally laying a hand on his shoulder. Somewhere in the muddle that Dean's mind was in, he considered that the angel probably refrained from such acts of human sympathy, but an exception was being made here. "It seems we're all…fucked, as you might put it."

Dean gave a weak laugh at the truth of the statement.

"We're losing in heaven; those that haven't been killed have been turned, and the handful of us that are left are grossly outnumbered. It seems…it's only a matter of time for us. The battle's been lost."

Dean stilled, his mind running double-time, the pulse pounding behind his eyes. At last, he opened his mouth and spoke in a quiet voice, "What if it isn't?"

The hand left his shoulder, and Dean looked up into puzzled, chocolate eyes.

"You just said that you were done trying…"

"I'm done with trying to fix him." Dean swallowed thickly, painfully. "I can't get him to give up the souls, but I can destroy the souls that are in him…it'll just – it'll just take him with them."

Muriel eyed him liked Dean had suggested washing Castiel in tomato juice to get rid of soul stink. "The only way to destroy those souls is if our Father Himself appeared and smote every last one of the accursed things from Castiel's being. Believe me, we've tried everything else."

"Your Father kind of made me deputy on this one…he gave me the gun and the go-ahead for when the necessity arose." Dean was keeping it light, not thinking about what it all meant, because otherwise he was sure the nausea he currently felt would overwhelm him at any second.

Muriel gaped at him, as much as an angel of the Lord could gape. "You couldn't have told me about this gun before?"

"It's actually a blade"- Dean closed his eyes and breathed in slowly through his nostrils -"and I swore to myself that I'd never use it, alright? I still don't know what the fuck I'm supposed to do because it's the last thing I want to do, but apparently there's nothing else left."

She stayed quiet for a long while, but Dean could almost hear the angelic whispering in the airwaves.

"…If God gave you this blade that can kill Castiel, and left the task to you…then the angels will aid you in whatever way we can."

Dean opened his eyes wide. "So _now_ you guys decide I'm worth helping. Not when my brother was an inch away from ripping his own throat out, but _now_, when the nuclear football's in my hands."

Muriel tipped her head at the reference, brow furrowed.

"Don't…don't do that," Dean muttered, turning away.

"Dean, I'm sure God left _you_ the choice for a reason, and I am offering you our allegiance because we still serve His will, though it may not be for much longer."

"You think I should do it?"

"I think you need to ask yourself what's at stake."

Dean felt like he only had an inkling of everything that hung in the balance, but he closed his eyes and let his mind talk. _The angels_…but honestly, Dean didn't give a damn about any of them except for the one, who no longer was. _The world_. Castiel was going to expand Stepford, Connecticut to the four corners of the earth, erasing free will itself from existence. _Sam_. Dean couldn't live with himself knowing Sam was alive and oblivious somewhere without a thought of his older brother. _Cas_. But he was gone, clearly. The Cas that Dean knew and loved wouldn't have broken Dean like that. He wouldn't have torn a living part of him away and claimed that it was 'for his own good'. Cas wouldn't have wanted Dean to let him do that, to let him live and continue hurting everything that was once important to him. He'd have yelled "Hey, assbutt!" at a mirror and sooner molotoved his own vessel than to watch himself destroy Dean. Because it's what Dean would have done for him, and Cas had chosen to be everything that his hunter was.

Dean opened his eyes and blinked up at the waiting angel.

"I'll do it." _Because he would have wanted me to._

**TBC**


	11. Chapter 11

_A/N: Building up…to chapter 11! It's longer this time, so without further ado…_

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><p>Muriel searched Dean's eyes for signs of uncertainty, and Dean suddenly desperately wanted to know what she saw. He'd made up his mind; he would kill Cas to save Cas. He knew it was what the angel would have wanted, what <em>his<em> angel would have wanted, but the knowledge had done nothing to ease the throbbing ache in Dean's chest.

But he knew that how he felt didn't matter. The world would crumble around him the longer he stalled, and he had to _act_, had to be Dean Winchester, the 'shoot first, ask questions later' man that he'd always been.

"I'll ask him to come down. I'll…talk to him until he lowers his guard, and then I'll do it."

"What would you like us to do?"

"No, you angels stay away from this. I've gotta do this alone." Dean had avoided thinking about succeeding in killing Cas, but he recognized what could happen if he didn't. "If I fail, I don't think he's gonna cherish my existence enough to overlook an assassination attempt. You guys should stick around longer and see if you can save your own asses without me."

The angel fixed him with a look of something akin to pity. "Don't speak like you think you're going to fail, Dean."

"Yeah, self-fulfilling prophecies or whatever." Dean snorted. "You should disappear now, before I talk myself into going to a strip club and just letting the world burn."

Muriel gave him another indecipherable look, but with a flap of wings later, she was gone.

Dean was left kneeling in the dirt. It was a position he rarely found himself in, rarely allowed himself to be in, but he figured since he was already there, he was no longer above closing his eyes in silent supplication to the God that had sent him on this damned-from-the-start mission.

Mostly he asked questions. Everything that he'd been asking himself all along: why _him_, why'd God had chosen a screw-up, why'd He pick someone that had no idea what he was doing and made everything worse tenfold. Dean asked if what he was prepared to do was the right thing, if there was any other way that he just hadn't seen, if this was even going to work.

At the end of it all, he waited for the telltale breeze to wash over him, instilling him with peace and zen or whatever.

It didn't come.

Dean huffed a bitter laugh. He probably shouldn't have expected anything; for all he knew, God was probably chilling somewhere light-years away, Dean's awkward prayer just one of a hundred channels that He was flipping through with a bucket of popcorn in His lap.

"Well fine, I'm not gonna expect you to help _me_," Dean spoke aloud. "But I just want to say this: it's not his fault, none of this is. I'm the one that tore him down and then tried to build him back up into _me_. He was always just trying to do right by you, and I'm the one that led him down the wrong path. So if this works, if I…if I kill Cas, I want you to forgive him, you hear me? I'm…I'm _asking_ you to please, _please_ forgive him."

Dean didn't expect it this time, and predictably, no palpable breath of assurance wafted through the air.

He rose to his feet and watched as a lone car sped past the trees lining the front of Bobby's yard. It was now or never.

"Cas?"

The god didn't show up immediately. Dean worried for a split second that he _knew_, and almost spun around expecting Castiel to backstab him before Dean got the chance to. But then the trench coat and the blue eyes were standing on the lawn, expectantly watching him.

"Yes, Dean?"

He swallowed. Dean tried to think of Sam, and all the times that they had charmed witnesses into giving up information with empty blandishments and winning smiles. But Dean couldn't do that to Cas, even though it wasn't really him, and even with the growing sense of fear and guilt in his gut.

"Hey, Cas…you been up there smiting angels? Can't say I'm really against that. I hear they're, uh, better pinned to a board in a glass case, anyway…prettier that way."

Castiel's expression didn't budge. Dean cleared his throat.

"Listen, Cas, I just wanted to tell you that I've, um, that I've seen the light," Dean began again, eyes skimming the ground. "You were right all along. I get it now…us humans…we make a mess of everything, don't we? God gave us all this power and, well, we just don't know how to use it. We hurt one another and we get one another hurt. It'd be better if we just didn't have that kind of power."

Dean took a step closer. He could see that Cas's eyes were shining with curious anticipation, though the rest of his expression was still closed off. "I…you looked up to me once. I still have no fucking idea as to why, but you did, and I wish I'd seen it sooner. Maybe I would've been more careful, and things wouldn't have gotten so…but I was scared, y'know? I mean, ha, I've spent my whole life trying not to screw Sammy up, and then a fucking _angel_ drops into my life. I thought somebody had finally come that could tell me what to do, but in the end it was the other way around. How was I supposed to know what to do with that? And then you _fell_ for me…_me_, of all people. I didn't deserve that."

He was standing directly in front of Cas now, close enough that Dean could make out the tiny cobalt veins of his irises. He could feel the heat and tension radiating off the vessel before him, though Castiel remained immobile, like a trap ready to be sprung.

"I _don't_ deserve that. And you should take it away from me, Cas. Please…just stop me from hurting you anymore."

Dean closed his eyes and leaned in until his forehead touched his angel's. He felt two solid hands place themselves on his hips, and his eyes fluttered open in surprise to see Castiel's closed, his breath coming out from his lips in steady puffs.

Dean was pretty sure his own were coming out in gasps, as he lifted his hands over Cas's shoulders. He shut his eyes again and reached through the air until he closed his hand around something cold and rigid that hadn't been there before, and the imminence of what was to happen hit Dean with a choking gasp, now that his choice was resting tangibly in his hand.

He gripped the blade tightly, hovering precariously over the god's back. Dean thoughts flickered back to the first time Castiel had appeared to him in the barn, sparks shooting everywhere, illuminating the angel with power like he'd never seen before. Dean had welcomed him with a blade then, squarely in the heart, and he'd watched Cas remove it unflinchingly. He remembered the awe that had inspired, how that moment had changed his life so completely. It almost seemed fitting that Dean would send him back out of his life with a blade, only unlike the first time, when Cas had seen the blade slide in right before his eyes, Dean was about to plant it in his back.

"_I'm sorry, Cas._"

The god opened his eyes, corners of his lips turned upwards in a sad smile. Wordlessly, Dean heard him speak across the inch of space that their gaze covered.

_It's okay, Dean. It's okay._

The blade slipped out of his grasp, landing with a thud in the grass.

What happened next became a blur in Dean's mind, as Cas leaned away with a look of surprise and Dean saw the flash of silver behind him, the beat of a dozen pair of wings resounding in the air.

He felt Cas spin around and shove an arm back to hold him, but the hunter ducked under and wrapped his body face-to-face around Castiel the instant he saw the angel wielding the knife, the livid look of determination perverting her girlish features.

The blade stopped singing when it lodged itself in Dean's back.

Everything was still for a moment. Then somewhere, Dean heard Muriel's cry of anguish, the sound of the last angels rushing forth in a futile attempt to save their own lives, and hell, he thought Bobby had actually burst outside at some point and was yelling his name. But all he really saw where the wide, blue eyes staring back at him in horror.

And then Dean was dropping to his knees, sliding out of Castiel's grip and crumpling to the ground, a sudden cough sending the taste of blood into his mouth.

Things became hazy. Dean felt electricity building in the air, could smell it in the grass at Cas's feet. And then everything was white-hot, and shrieking, and Dean thought he'd died and this was hell, but he'd been there and knew that they didn't have Bobby's Kentucky bluegrass in hell. The roar was threatening to burst his eardrums and his eyes were screwed shut but it was still so bright it _burned_…and then everything stopped.

Except he'd still been stabbed, and as the stupid trench coat dropped to his side and rolled him over into his lap, he couldn't hold back the groan of agony.

"Dean! Dean, I've got you, it's okay, I'm here."

When he finally blinked back the tears, the same blue eyes were staring worriedly into his own. The same ones that had told him _sorry _with a hand on his shoulder after he failed to stop his mom from making the bargain with Azazel, the ones that had pinned him to the wall of the beautiful room as he silently asked for Dean's trust, the ones that had made him a promise never to change after saving him from Zachariah because they 'had an appointment'.

"Heya, Cas." Dean flashed him the brightest, bloodiest smile he could manage. "It's been awhile."

The angel stared at him in disbelief, dropping his head and letting out a sigh. "What were you thinking? You should have let me die, Dean. I almost destroyed the world, I killed all my brothers and sisters, I…oh, God, Sam. Dean, you should have-"

"Hey, shh. You're back now, aren't you?"

Cas pursed his lips, the lines between his brows furrowing deeper. "You never give up, do you, Dean?"

"That's why-" _Wheeze_. "That's why you love me."

Dean knew that his lungs were filling up with blood; he wasn't going to last much longer. But he'd be damned if he was going out without making the next few minutes worth everything he'd been through since Cas first binged on the soul-juice.

He wrapped his fingers in Cas's lapels and tugged down. "Listen, I know you're gonna make everything right, so I'm not worried about my d-death being in vain-"

"Dean, wait-"

"-No, this can't wait – I _love_ you, Cas. I want you to know that I did it, _all_ of it, for you, and-"

"Dean-"

"-There's no one else I'd rather be with r-right now…as I…lay here d-dying."

The angel's eyes flickered with warmth, even as his frown deepened.

"Dean, stop talking."

Cas reached under the hunter and effortlessly yanked out the blade as his other warm hand caressed the side of Dean's face. A guttural scream died out in Dean's throat as he felt his lungs clear and the hole mend, the metallic tang disappearing from his mouth.

Dean blinked slowly. "You've, uh, you've still got your mojo?" he asked, more as a statement than a question.

"Mm, yes."

Dean rose to his feet, taking big gulps of the blessed air now that he no longer felt like he was drowning. Cas followed him up, eyes never leaving his charge.

"But you're…you. Like, entirely yourself."

"Yes, Dean. I'm entirely me. Entirely yours." Cas smiled then, his eyes glimmering with what Dean was once afraid to call 'love'.

It didn't so much scare him now, as awaken something in Dean so strong that it punched the breath right out of him again, his only remaining impulse being to wrap Cas in his arms and bury his face into the angel's neck.

"I'm just glad you came back from the dark side," Dean mumbled.

"…I can assure you that the Force is not the source of my powers."

Dean just laughed and burrowed his face farther into the crook of Cas's neck. "Of course it's not."

When Cas reciprocated and clutched back just as tightly, Dean thought he could've let reality itself unravel and he wouldn't have cared, just as long as he had his angel and his stupid Jedi mind tricks that could see into his soul.

Which made Dean want that more than anything, for Cas to look into his eyes and see everything that his mud-monkey brain couldn't put into words. He pulled back until their noses were side-to-side, lips almost brushing and Dean swore he could feel sparks every time they drifted closer. And maybe it was the intensity of it all, but Dean was starting to sweat under the look Cas was fixing him with.

The angel was really damn hot. Another time, another place, Dean would've made a dozen jokes about it, but Cas's body temperature was climbing and Dean could feel his breath coming faster and less evenly.

"Cas?" Dean moved a hand to his feverish head, just as the angel's eyes rolled back and he started sliding out of Dean's grip.

"_Shit_-" Dean braced him before his knees hit the ground, lowering him into his lap like Cas had done with his own body moments ago.

"Come on, Cas, talk to me_, what's happening_?"

Blue eyes fluttered open with visible effort. "Dean…I'm not…I can't hold them back-"

"What the hell are you talking about? You were just _fine_, the souls are _gone_!"

"You were hurt…and I couldn't hold back when I killed Muriel and the others…and I think I 'short-circuited' myself as you might say." Cas was a _live coal_ by now, but Dean kept his arms wrapped around him. "The souls aren't gone…they're charging back up right now. My vessel won't be able to handle the power another time around."

"So…you're gonna have to change vessels?" Dean started mentally listing all the people he might be able to reach in time.

"No, Dean." Cas smiled sadly up at his hunter. "I took the souls into my true form; it won't matter what vessel I'm in."

Dean's brain refused to register what was happening. "You tell me what to _do_, Cas! I'm not gonna lose you again, so just _tell me what to do_!" He shouted brokenly, fists balling up in the folds of Cas's coat.

"I…don't know what to tell you. I'm sorry, Dean."

"_No!_ You don't get to tell me sorry, you son of a bitch, you can't leave me like this – not after everything-" Dean's voice choked up and he struggled for breath.

A single tear rolled out of Castiel's eye as he looked up at Dean. "_I don't want to go_."

Dean broke. He fell forward and pressed his face into the side of his angel's, more than stubble burning through his skin but he didn't jerk away, just held onto Cas and let the sobs rack through his body. If this was where Cas was going to fall, then Dean had nowhere else to be.

Cas laid a hand on his face and eased him back. Their eyes met again, and Dean was going to stay in that cerulean abyss until they both went out in a blaze of fucking glory. He covered Cas's hand and pressed the searing fingers deeper into his skin.

The angel kept moving both their hands down Dean's face, a remorseful look in his eye.

"_Goodbye, Dean_."

There was a split second of confusion, and then Dean was throwing himself forward to clutch at Castiel, bellowing _NO! _over and over again, out loud or in his head, he didn't know, but the blue eyes were already fading, their mournful stare half a world away, until Dean was alone and on his knees in the middle of a nowhere.

He scrambled to his feet, paying no mind to the second-degree burns across his hands and arms and face.

"You _bastard_!" He raged at an empty night sky. "I wanted you by my side as I died, and _this_ is what you give to me? This isn't _saving me_! This isn't what I _want_! If I can't have you, then there is nothing _left_ that I want!...You bring me back, you hear me? Dammit, Cas, _bring me back_!"

But it was too late, and Dean crumpled to the ground as he felt his _very_ _being_ reverberate with the force of an explosion on the other side of the world. It felt worse, so much worse than when he'd lost Sammy, the pain choking Dean and reducing his vision to pinpoints of light. And then the scar on his shoulder flared, making Dean cry out one last time before his body gave out, and everything went dark.

**TBC**

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><p><em>AN: omg. I'm a terrible human being. I've had this chapter in my head since the first few chapters and I've just been trying to get here this whole time…and I'm sorry if I broke anybody that wanted something happy._

_There's just one chapter left (unless I get pounced on by a plot bunny), so hang in there!_

_Again, thanks for reading, and please review! (whether I destroyed you here or you're still holding out hope.) =) _


	12. Chapter 12

_A/N: Final chapter! Eee! R&R, pretty please. =)_

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><p>Dean blinked up at the hospital room ceiling.<p>

He'd memorized all the tiny cracks in the tiles in the last few weeks, after he'd finally woken up there to find his face and arms bandaged up. The memories had flooded back and he'd ripped out the IV and tried to split, almost punching out the doctor that tried to stop him. They kept him properly sedated after that, which frankly, Dean was thankful for. It made the agony he was still feeling slightly duller. Eventually, they weaned him off of those drugs enough to start asking him questions, like who he was, where he came from, why he'd been lying unconscious in the middle of a national park in the Australian Outback. They explained that a German couple camping in the Simpson Desert had found him near their campsite, and as the retired surgeons that they just happened to be, cleaned up his wounds until emergency personnel transported him to the nearest hospital some three hundred kilometers away.

The middle of a desert, half dead from exposure and exhaustion, and he'd just gotten that lucky.

So lucky that the impending nuclear meltdown of the world hadn't prevented Dean from being saved. When he'd proved no longer to be a danger to himself or others, the nurses had given him a remote to the TV in his room. It had already been almost two weeks since it happened, but when an unexplained explosion makes a crater out of everything from the Northwest Territories to the fucking Yucatan, you won't see anything else being reported, or even shown on TV. They'd thought it'd been China, or Russia, or North Korea, but there was no country left unshaken, much less claiming responsibility. They'd thought it was a meteor, but no one saw it coming, or the apocalypse, and if Dean still had it in him to laugh, that idea would have had him in stitches.

The world had ground to a halt. There wasn't anybody with a voice that hadn't lost someone in 'the greatest tragedy ever to befall mankind', and all those voices had suddenly been stopped by a blast heard 'round the world. Rescue efforts didn't even know where to begin; they couldn't go anywhere near on account of the fires. Their only saving grace was that the fallout dust and debris wasn't radioactive, but people were already packing up their lives and quietly or not-so-quietly waiting for their turn to be vaporized.

Almost no one still believed things were going to get back to normal, but some still preferred to pretend like they would. Which is why the remaining nurses and doctors still passed by Dean's door everyday, after they'd learned where he was from. They knew that most (if not all) his loved ones were gone, and the degree of separation was enough to scare them away but not enough to keep them from looking at him, like they knew that it all had something to do with him but couldn't figure out how.

He knew they were right…his parents were dead, and so were Sam, Bobby, and everyone that Cas had brought back in vain. And he was the reason for all of it.

So Dean just lay in his bed, tracing the fractures on the ceiling with his eyes, while some wounds healed and others remained.

They transferred him to the psych ward and sent a shrink to try and get him to talk. He didn't know why they cared. She sat by his bed, and some part of Dean noted that she was cute, a long-buried impulse to flirt passing as quickly as it came. It didn't help her get anything out of him beyond one-word answers. She left a little while after Dean stopped talking, after she asked him how he'd first gotten the burn on his shoulder.

They let him go a week or two later. One of the nurses, Juliet, had a brother up in Mount Isa City whose roommate had moved back in with his parents after _North America_ happened, so she set Dean up in the empty room for free. Money didn't seem to matter all that much anymore.

Juliet drove him there, introduced him to her brother, and bid him farewell with a hug and a sad smile. From there, Kyle showed him around and let him get settled in, but Dean's only possessions had been a small stack of goodbye notes from the hospital staff. He'd been the only one without regular visitors.

Dean found himself standing in front of the bathroom mirror, studying his reflection for the longest time since he came back from hell, when his body had been pristine save the handprint on his shoulder. He looked at himself now. His skin had healed slowly, but all that remained were red splotches up and down his hands and face that looked dry and papery. What hit Dean the hardest was how hollow his eyes looked, the skin pulled tight over his bones. He'd lost a lot of weight being off of his feet for so long, without his usual diet of cheeseburgers, cherry pie, and general will-to-live to sustain his bulk.

Dean shut off the light and went into his new room, shut the curtains and crawled into bed. He only planned on waking up when he felt someone sit down on the other side of the bed, when he could turn over and hear an angel ask him what he'd been dreaming of, and Dean could tell him all about the terrible nightmare he'd finally woken from.

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><p>They said it was miraculous, a month and a half later and the earth around the edges of the blast zone was already repairing itself, green shoots pushing out of the wreckage. The images that the satellites relayed back showed that even the epicenter had ceased burning, and somehow the fallout had stayed confined to the waters and less-populated areas. People had even started emerging from the existential crisis, their morbid fears replaced by a manic need to find <em>meaning<em> in life.

It was like a phoenix rising from the ashes, they said, a forest born anew after the fire.

Dean tried to set himself on fire.

He didn't want to do it at home, after all, the place was Kyle's and he'd been nice enough to let Dean crash there this whole time, so he lugged a container of 'petrol' out to an empty field and bade _fuck you_ to the cruel world. He'd managed to empty the entire thing all over himself before Dean realized his lighter wasn't in his jacket pocket. Or anywhere else on himself.

By the time Dean got home and trudged his offending scent past a bewildered Kyle, he'd realized what a stupid idea it was to begin with. It would have hurt like hell to burn to death, even though that had kind of been the point. It'd seemed…_apt_.

The next morning he found the fucking lighter next to the gas stove where he'd left it. Damn his stomach and the stupid pilot light that had to be manually lit, and damn the leftover pasta that he still had waiting for him in the fridge.

* * *

><p>God wasn't listening, or He wasn't answering. He wanted Cas back so bad, but all Dean got were glimpses of strangers with blue eyes and tousled hair, khaki coattails flying past him on the street, deep baritone voices of erstwhile smokers (reformed since a certain global catastrophe). He thought he saw his angel everywhere, but every time he turned around, even time he got closer, it was always just to disappoint himself. Dean wasn't sure he wasn't just imagining it anymore but it still broke him every time it happened, and so many times ended up with Dean doing something stupid just to try to make it all stop.<p>

It's how he found himself waiting in a mangrove swamp at midnight, soaked in beef stock and freezing his ass off. Bobby (the brainy bastard) had told him once about 'bunyips', some sort of man-eating swamp creatures that had been a pest problem for their hunter brethren down under. Easy enough to gank, but deadly motherfuckers if you were unarmed. Dean thought it'd be relatively quick, no evidence for an unsuspecting tourist to find, and he always figured he'd be done in by his work. So he sat in a rented boat he wasn't supposed to have at this hour, waiting to let the son of a bitch burst out of the murky depths and surprise him.

The morning sunlight streaming through the trees woke him up. Dean yawned, the souring smell of beef stock hitting his nose and alerting him to the fact that no swamp monster had taken advantage of an easy midnight snack. Hell, he was completely unscathed, not even a mosquito bite to show for an entire night deep in the wetlands. Dean cursed his luck and took the boat back, paid the hefty fine while avoiding the looks they gave him, and went back home to take a shower and maybe make himself some more pasta.

* * *

><p>Life was going back to the closest thing <em>normal<em> could pass for these days. Kyle had started seeing a girl from work and gone to the movies with her a few times, and as Hollywood blockbusters were no longer an option, the local theaters had been showing classics to stay open. People were moving on from the shock, and doing the things they'd been doing before everything happened. Their landlord had even knocked on their door one day while Kyle was out and kindly reminded Dean that they were behind on their rent, and Dean had realized he needed to start pulling his own weight.

Which meant he had to find a job. Bartenders were in demand (some people were still convinced the world was ending and decadence was the way to go) and Dean could mix a mean Long Island, but he found himself between the stacks of the local library, learning the Dewey Decimal System and shelving books. A distant part of him knew Sammy (the one who was still his brother) would have given him hell for it, but the place was quiet and the girl that worked at the reference desk had warm eyes the color of cornflowers.

The job kept him busy; with so many major online sources of information out of commission, people were turning back to the hard copy, so Dean handled book after book where no one could see him and the ugly scars that he carried. Not the ones on his skin…those had almost completely healed.

* * *

><p>It was sometime in the early morning hours, while the sun hadn't risen yet, that Dean walked out to the middle of the twenty-four story bridge. He'd taken a bus out to Brisbane, what with the shortage of high bridges in Mount Isa, in a last ditch attempt to simply give up.<p>

It wasn't that things had been particularly difficult; he'd done his job, done it well, paid his half of the rent, but everything, even the girl at the reference desk with the blue eyes reminded him of what he was missing. He couldn't help seeing and hearing Cas everywhere he went, and it had been a year, a full year since Dean had recovered and failed to retain the most vital piece of himself.

In truth, it had been the most miserable, least productive year a hunter could possibly have. Dean had spent his entire life year killing things on a weekly basis, and in this one year, the man who had ended up dead more times than heaven could count couldn't manage to properly off himself once. Something had always come up.

He'd tried more conventional methods, like the time he'd gotten a refill on an expired prescription for painkillers and was at the store buying some whiskey to chase them with, when a masked thief had tried to rob the cashier. Dean knocked the man unconscious, tied him up, and left the store whiskey-less. Another time, Dean had left a note for Kyle and some money to pay for the toaster he was taking into the bathroom. He'd gotten the tub filled and the appliance all plugged in and ready to tip over, when one of his coworkers called and begged him to take their afternoon shift. Dean drained the bath, put the toaster back in the kitchen, tore up the note, and went into work. Throw in an attempt to leap off a building thwarted by a class field trip passing below, the ceiling light ripping out when he tried to hang himself on it, and the general inability to acquire a firearm and you had the worst streak of botched suicide attempts the world had ever seen.

And that's why he'd gone all the way to Brisbane to give it one last shot, because between jumping and drowning, one out of two would be good enough.

The river was bathed in the ochre glow of the bridge lights, and Dean could see the surface barely moving from where he stood on top of the railing, hand wrapped around the scaffolding beside him. The water looked warm and almost comforting, and Dean noted that at this altitude, the impact on the water ought to knock him out cold and the river would take care of the rest.

Dean shifted his weight on the round bar beneath him, readying his mind to take the leap. _Please let this work. Please, _please_, just let this work this time._

A breeze went past and Dean shivered involuntarily.

"You should step down from there," came a gruff, familiar voice from behind.

Dean stilled for a moment, before shutting his eyes and breathing out slowly. "Nice try, Dean, but he's not really there."

His hallucination continued. "Even if that's true, I'm asking you not to jump, because I've never swum before and I don't wish for my first time to be trying to save you."

He managed to laugh at that, imagining Cas paddling away in a pool, trench coat weighing him down. "No one's asking you to follow me in. But I'm not strong enough to keep doing this. Sorry, Jiminy Cricket."

His conscience didn't respond. Dean thought maybe his subconscious had stopped trying to dissuade him, resigned to letting the scheduled program proceed.

"I- It's-…I don't know who 'Jiminy' is, but it's me, Dean…It's Cas."

Dean turned around, and lost his footing.

His hands hit the bar with a metallic slap, legs dangling in mid-air, but his hallucination was already upon him, tugging him back over the railing. Dean clambered up over and collapsed on top of a warm, solid, _corporeal_ body, his hands reaching out on their own accord to pull the face closer in the dim, orange light.

The stubble felt real. The piercing blue gaze felt even realer.

Dean pushed himself up and looked back at the rippling lights of the river. "I already jumped, didn't I? I'm dead, and this is what they've sent to fuck with me, and you're gonna disappear again at any second-"

"Dean, listen to me. You're still _alive_."

"Then that's it. I've finally gone bat-shit insane." Dean looked into those eyes and huffed a short laugh. "_Why are you wearing that stupid man suit_?" he sing-songed.

The furrow between his hallucination's eyebrows deepened. "I assumed your familiarity with this vessel would be comforting."

The figments of his own imagination were supposed to understand his own references, Dean thought.

They sat facing each other on the cold metal, the silence between them stretching for, what seemed, another year.

"A year, Cas. A whole, fucking year."

Castiel's eyes softened. "I've been told that you've tried a number of idiotic things during that year."

Something between a sob and a laugh erupted from Dean. "_Tried_ being the operative word…Was it you? Every time something stopped me-"

"No, I've been kept away from you all this time. My sentence, for the things that I did…the last thing I remember is coming back to awareness, not knowing what became of you and not being able to think about anything else…" Fingers traced themselves across the hints of discoloration on Dean's face.

"I assumed that I would spend the rest of eternity dwelling in my ignorance; I knew I deserved to, but the will of my Father is incomprehensible, even to me. He brought me before Him and asked me what I would have Him do. I pleaded to be separated from my grace, but I begged to see you one last time, and He consented. And then God did the unimaginable and _forgave_ me. After all I did…and then He sent me here, telling me that He'd tired of saving you from yourself."

Cas grasped Dean's face in his hands and pulled him in, locking his eyes onto Dean's wide, moss-green ones. "So please don't jump, Dean…I'd have to come in after you, and even if you managed to survive the fall, I'd most likely be the one needing to be saved. Again."

Dean wrapped a hand around the back of his ex-angel's neck and closed what was left of the space between them, their eyes fluttering shut simultaneously. It was enough just to feel the warmth, hear those steady breaths, and feel his own suppressed tears flow freely again.

He whispered into the other man's lips. "_I'll always save you_."

Then they were finally connected, like all of eternity had led up to this moment. And yet the kiss still seemed too _little_, the physical act insufficient to contain the depth of their unfathomable bond. But Dean was only human, and now so was Cas, the two clinging to one another as the world woke up around them.

Dean never did believe that he was worthy of an angel's rebellion, but what he did believe was that Castiel deserved nothing less than his own complete sacrifice.

And so in the end, the two absolved one another. Each offered his scars to the other, and both emerged purified by their reciprocal faith, the Righteous Man in his Angel…and the Angel in his Righteous Man.

**End**

_A/N: So many feelings XD…feelings for you, my lovely readers, who have stuck with me this long, feelings for Dean and Cas, whose epic love reduces me to slobbery creys, and feelings for this upcoming season premiere in which I'm freaking out for what the showrunners are gonna do to my favorite angel._

_I hope the ending was satisfactory; I've been trying to find a suitable way to close things, tried a whole bunch of things, and finally just stuck with this._

_But truly, thank you all for reading and reviewing. =) I hope you enjoyed my first piece of fanfic as much as I enjoyed writing it, and I'll most likely come back with more fics when Season 7 makes me need the therapy._

_much love,_

Paperology


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